


A Bite of the Sleepless Heart

by beams



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bug Maniac Zayn, Dreams, Fluff, Halloween, Haphephobia, Liam the Philosophy Major, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5360063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beams/pseuds/beams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A late-night chance encounter necessitates a desperate fundraiser. There's a dog and an insomniac and a vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bite of the Sleepless Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for wokeuptired's 1d autumn fic exchange 2015.  
> Use at least one of the three prompts below:  
> 1\. Vampire Narry  
> 2\. Zarry are at uni together  
> 3\. Vampire Harry with a non vampire boy/girl

* * *

Harry’s chewing on C. Howard’s Violet candy when Niall stumbles by and falls into the neighboring seat.

Thumb pressed to the corner of his mouth, Harry chews. He swallows, tears away more wrapper, selects another C. Howard’s Violet candy, pops in, and continues:

Harry eats mints. A 15-count roll for every class.

A pair of blood oranges and wrapped pastry sit to his left.

He peeks at Niall. Niall is sprawled facedown, drooling on the desk, his hair a tawny mess and his backpack gaping in every place it can gape. Harry reaches out and begins doing up the zippers.

“I’m a goner,” Niall groans, trying to wave Harry’s hand away.

Harry dodges. Niall loses his balance and tips the chair, and Harry seizes the backpack and patiently rights him.

“I mean it this time,” Niall says, unfazed. “I think I’m dead. I am dead. **I’m dead.** ”

Once Niall’s backpack is properly zipped and Niall has stopped moaning and groaning, Harry slides over the pastry and takes another C. Howard’s Violet candy for himself.

“You can copy my notes later,” Harry murmurs around his thumb.

Niall smells the pastry in his vicinity. He turns his head against the desk and observes it with a bloodshot eye, and his shaggy hair raises with his eyebrow.

Harry bites down into the first blood orange and scribbles something intellectual in fancy, looping calligraphy.

Niall extends his tongue, sticks it against the waxed paper and pulls the pastry to his mouth.

Harry smiles, pretending not to notice, thumb pressed to the corner of his mouth.

* * *

Following 80 minutes of listening to Harry suck the insides from blood oranges, Niall emerges from The Art of Self-Awareness (not all that self-aware, not all that artful.)

“There is no such thing as free food,” Liam declares, rolling an unlit cigarette between his teeth.

There’s **no such thing** as a time when Niall’s in the mood for Liam the Philosophy Major. There are times that Niall feels annoyed, and there are times that Niall feels murderous. With Liam sporting a pompadour, full-blown beard, pleather jacket, acid wash jeans, moonboots, doused with the most overpowering stuff that Niall thinks is just called _Beast_ , Niall decides that he’s feeling murderous.

“What are you even doing here…?”

“ **Beware** of that one,” Liam replies, smoldering so far into the distance he probably glimpses the future. “The smart thing to do is _trust my intuitions_.”

“I don’t wanna be anything like you.” Niall sighs, and his eyes close.

“Wanna chill later?” Liam asks, giving Niall a pitying stare.

Staring at an escaped curl from Liam’s pompadour, Niall replies, “No.”

“Zayn’s caterpillars have metamorphosed.”

Niall catches a smug note of pride, and he grimaces.

“So they’ve… turned into butterflies?” he says.

“Nearly. Zayn suspects it could be soon. Tonight, maybe.” Liam raises his eyebrows, waiting for Niall to accept the invitation.

Niall backs away, glares at Liam, turns and leaves. He finds some loose change on the floor, wobbles over to pick it up, turns to glare at Liam some more, straightens and goes along his wobbly way.

Hairy Liam the Philosophy Major stares after Niall’s retreating backpack with all its zippers coming undone, holds his unlit cigarette and pretends to inhale, shuts his eyes and pretends to shake imaginary ashes in Niall’s direction.

* * *

Niall doesn’t mean to be rolling his forehead against the neighbors’ door that evening; he just realized that he hasn’t eaten anything since Harry’s pastry, and not sleeping makes him very hungry, and he plans on slipping away soon as he’s been fed because free food isn’t worth a Night of Liam and Zayn. And there’s no such thing as free food, anyway.

Zayn answers almost before Niall even knocks, and Niall tumbles face-first into a fleecy, fragrant lavender sweater. It smells like bubble bath, Niall thinks, and he has an instant, waking dream of warm suds.

“Niall!” Zayn exclaims, smiling down at Niall kissing on his chest. “You haven’t missed them, don't worry! They’re a bit shy this time around, but we’re all patient. Y’hungry?”

“Yes.”

Zayn pushes thick glasses up his nose (the lenses magnify his eyes about four times) and Niall removes his face from Zayn’s sweater, spits out some lint, rubs an eye and yawns.

“We’ve got Chinese,” Zayn says. “Liam’s gone and ordered something new, and it tastes fantastic! It always does, anyway, when Liam orders. It’s always _different_ , what he gets. But then… _so is Liam_ , isn't he?”

Zayn leads Niall in, and another group chatters past carrying eighty takeout boxes. Niall catches mention of “free food” as they go, and Liam scowls at them all from the kitchen, leaned against the arch with an impressive hand on his hip.

“You don’t **have** to stay,” Zayn says to Niall, adding with a hopeful smile, “but it’d be really great if you _could_ stick around. Really great.”

Niall looks around the living room, deserted except for a lone boy asleep on the couch.

“I’ll stay,” Niall says.

“ _Thank you_.” Zayn’s smile is so luminous, Niall thinks actual tears flood his eyes. Zayn pushes up glasses always sliding down. “It’s going to be **so cool** , I promise.”

“Yeah.”

Liam’s arms are crossed when Niall and Zayn enter the kitchen.

“Come to eat and run, too?” Annoyed Liam asks, giving Niall a haughty tilt of the chin. “May as well just say it, if that’s what you mean to do.”

Liam’s hair has gone all mussed and curled. Like a poodle, Niall thinks. And he’s wearing sweatpants and a shirt that reads _No Control_. Niall likes him a smidge more as Laidback Liam the Philosophy Major instead of Pompous Liam the Philosophy Major, but that only means Liam is barely-less-than-tolerable.

Before Niall can even give him an answer, Liam grabs a handful of his shirt and yanks him close.

“You’re _wrinkling_ my—!”

“If you break Zayn’s heart, eat and leave,” Liam growls into Niall’s ear, “ _I will show you that **I’m far more than just talk**_.”

“Stop bullying me.” Niall attempts to pull his shirt out of Liam’s hand, gagging on a cloying mouthful of _Beast_. “M’sticking around.”

“Niall! This is Harry,” Zayn says, and Niall and Liam both turn, Liam releasing Niall’s shirt collar, kind of flinging Niall back at the same time.

Zayn’s gesturing to a familiar green-eyed, wavy-haired string bean, hunched in an oversized sweater, in tight pants and tattered boots.

“We’ve met,” Harry says, voice just as low as it is at eight AM.

Niall puts a hand behind his neck, gripping his shoulder; he’s never seen Harry outside of class, and he’s not sure why that should make him nervous.

It could be because Harry’s usually attentive only on lecture, on whatever meticulous notes he’s making, and Niall’s never seen how Harry’s eyes outside of class are more narrowed and playful. He always looks so professional in class. Like a distressed poet, or maybe even an 80s pop star who didn’t quite make it, almost intimidating in that way he’s always so prepared.

Now, almost with the way the ends of his mouth can curl up like that, he looks more like he knows your deepest, darkest secret, and he finds it hilarious.

“Hey, Harry.”

“Hello, Niall.”

The smile is dazzling as ever, and maybe Harry’s even a little nervous, too. He rocks on the heels of scuffed suedes and puts both hands behind his back.

Niall notes an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Tumnus.

“Come to see the butterflies?” Harry asks, twirling one booted toe on the tile.

“Come to _eat_ ,” Niall mutters, moving closer to distance himself from Grumpy Liam.

Harry grins as if that’s some inside joke between the two of them, and Zayn comes to Liam with a melted chocolate-sweet smile, and Liam has to glance away, annoyed by the urge to smile just as goofy.

“Who’s that, Zayn?” Harry asks when they’re back in the living room.

Zayn glances over the boy asleep on his couch, unconcerned as if the stranger is a permanent house fixture.

“I don't know him,” he says.

Harry sits next to the sprawled sleeping boy. The sleeper’s got one shoe on and the other on the floor. His jeans are rolled to the ankles, and his wrinkled dress shirt is messy as his spiky brown hair.

Harry is the only one among them who doesn’t have a box of Chinese; even the sleeping boy’s got an empty one atop his disheveled shirt.

Niall asks, and Harry replies something about having “sensitive teeth.”

They sit—three of them eating in silence and the fourth sitting in silence—all watching Zayn’s Painted Lady pupae. Harry retrieves a blood orange from his coat pocket and begins rolling it from palm to palm along slender fingers.

The sleeping boy shifts, the shoed foot twitches, and he stretches out against the couch. The empty box tumbles off to the floor, and he pushes up the wrinkled shirt to scratch his stomach.

All four turn to stare, and the boy yawns and goes back to sleep.

“So when do they, er, hatch?” Niall finally asks, unsure if he’s even looking at the right thing.

Zayn lowers his camera.

“ _Emerge_. And we don’t know, exactly,” he says. “But it _should_ be within the next week.”

Harry blinks and frowns.

“A week?” he echoes. “We have to wait that long?”

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,” Liam mumbles, vacant stare zoned in on a dark corner of nowhere.

“I-I mean,” Zayn says, looking from Niall to Harry like they’re both about to run for the door. “There’s some more food, if you like, and you can use the TV—”

“This is for your extra credit?” Harry asks.

“Extra—? O-oh, yes, yeah, I mean. _Extra credit_ , yeah. Not for my own personal enjoyment, or anything.” Zayn’s laugh is breathy and nervous, and he hastily turns to ask Liam what he’s staring at.

“For what class?”

Liam’s unfocused gaze snaps to Niall, and his eyes narrow.

Zayn looks at first stunned by Niall’s question, but his astonishment quickly gives way to unabashed joy, and Niall senses impending doom.

“ _Arthropodology!_ ”

“Bless you,” says the boy who used to be asleep on the couch, staring at Zayn with confused sympathy.

“From Greek _arthron_ meaning ‘joint’ and _podos_ ‘foot.’ Together: _jointed feet!_ It’s all the insects, crustaceans and arachnids whose limbs are jointed! So that includes these little guys, these _Vanessa cardui_ , brilliant examples of…”

While Liam looks on with a strange mix of fondness and exasperation, Niall thinks of at least two other things he’d rather be doing. He wonders if Chinese takeout is worth whatever Zayn is putting them through.

And the more he thinks about it, the more he understands why Liam and Zayn only hang out with each other. He’s looking between the two, and Zayn’s blabbering on and completely oblivious, and Liam’s actually smiling (it looks about as lazy as Liam the Philosophy Major always looks) with his face propped on his hand. A pairing as perfect as gas station burritos and two days' indigestion.

Niall looks to Harry and finds Harry already staring. Normally, he’d look away; they only know each other from class, and anyway, it’s weird.

Then Niall can’t look away.

He literally can’t, and it’s almost like Harry **knows** he can’t. He’s got this really smug look all of a sudden, the faintest of smirks, and he tilts his head just enough so more curls fall over his shoulders. When he blinks, it’s another dream. A slow-motion shot in a movie, little glitters sparkling in his eyes as the wind tousles his mane, billowing as though underwater. And they’re probably out on a beach, and the sun’s going down so Harry’s face is framed by sparkling reflections of yesterday’s dreams, tomorrow’s hopes and the mystery of life itself, most likely.

Before Niall gets too freaked or deeply intellectual, Harry breaks eye contact, looks away and pinches his bottom lip between his fingers; casual as anything and denying anything about their intense connection.

Niall shudders.

“So explain to me how the tracheae ‘invade’ the so-called wing base in the final larval instar,” says the boy who used to be asleep on the couch. He’s still lounged, still with his shirt ridden up, propped upright on his elbows. He has a set of mocking blue eyes (now glaring in concentration), a grating voice, thin mouth and light stubble.

Liam’s fallen asleep, his head held up by his hand.

Harry slides from the couch and crawls to the TV. Instead of watching him, Niall pointedly watches Zayn indicating all the Painted Lady pupae for couch boy’s benefit.

Harry sorts through all of the games that Zayn and Liam have:

Big Brain Academy 2 and Geometry Wars

When he oozes back to the couch, Niall watches. Harry climbs up next to him, and Niall looks down at his lap, promptly overheating to dangerously high levels.

Harry drops a Wiimote in Niall’s hands (it’s cool when Niall touches it), and he keeps the other for himself.

“I’ve never played this game,” Harry confesses, and Niall watches the introduction of Geometry Wars when he says, “Me, neither.”

The game has simple objectives: shoot everything and don’t die. It has nothing to do with geometry.

Harry opts for the two-player option.

It isn’t long before he’s laughing. Niall’s never heard Harry laugh, and the sound is surprising, but fitting. Also, it makes Niall laugh, hesitant in the beginning. Niall can’t see very well when he laughs very hard, and they start wrecking their ships twice as bad as before.

“ _Group_ them!” Harry stresses, long fingers fumbling with every button even though all he has to do is move.

“ **Group them!** ” shouts couch boy as Niall’s ship is destroyed. “C’mon! Group ‘em up!”

Liam’s awake, and Zayn never fell asleep.

 “All right, I’m having a go,” says couch boy, tumbling down to the floor. The stranger’s hair is a mess of static electricity, and he pops Harry’s sweater when he lifts the Wiimote for a turn.

Niall watches Harry laugh, and for the first time, he seems to notice the strangeness of how bright Harry’s teeth are. Having worn braces for over two years, Niall notices teeth, but he’s never noticed Harry’s in the way he does now.

Harry’s got nice teeth (he already knows that), but Harry now has _dazzling_ teeth. Like those pictures Niall used to look at in the orthodontist’s, all those “after” shots that don’t really exist.

And there’s something else unusual about Harry’s teeth that Niall can’t quite place, but by then Harry’s no longer laughing. All five of them are focused on nothing but the game, and Niall can’t think about teeth in the midst of all the shouting and climbing and jumping going on.

He’s terrible, Harry’s terrible, couch boy isn’t much better, Liam thinks he’s good and isn't, and Zayn actually is. The TV looks like the New Year over New York, and then it’s four in the morning and the couch boy is proclaiming how hungry he is.

Niall’s hungry, too, but he waits for Zayn to suggest they go get something before admitting to it.

“Cold takeout isn’t the greatest for breakfast,” Zayn states.

“No, it’s not!” wails couch boy.

“Doughnuts,” Liam says around a yawn. “Food for the soul. And probably the only place open as well.”

Harry’s staring at Niall again; Niall can feel it. In the entryway, Niall pulls his scarf tight around his neck in an attempt to avoid the pull. Harry appears soft and fuzzy and gangly by morning; by night, he’s sleek, mysterious and almost scary if he didn’t do things like buy Niall breakfast pastries and use three different colors of highlighter on notes that Niall often copies.

“You’re not cold?” Niall asks him once they’re outside.

It’s frosted a few times, no snow yet. They’re all in their versions of winter wear and woolen scarves except for Harry, who has on his baggy sweater and a thin, purely decorative shawl wrapped around his mouth.

Harry shakes his head. This inexplicably annoys Niall.

“I mean, I was just _wondering_ ,” Niall says, pretending like he’s adjusting the buttons on his jacket, embarrassed for some reason. “ **If** you were cold… It is cold out here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Niall nods, looking around for some evidence. He breathes out.

“Yeah, you can see your breath already,” he says.

Harry doesn’t say anything, but he pulls the scarf tighter around his mouth.

Couch boy giggles over to Niall and Harry, breathing right in Niall’s face.

“Look it here,” he says. “I’m a _frost-breathing_ _dragon_.”

He does it again, and Niall laughs and does it back (it’s the lack of sleep that makes everything funny, he thinks.) The crisp air hurts his lungs when he breathes in.

Zayn jumps on Liam’s back, and Liam hardly staggers. Nor does he seem at all surprised; Niall gets the impression Liam piggybacks Zayn often.

“This is where I go in the morning,” Harry says to Niall once they’re outside of the Outrite Donut. Harry’s hands are jammed deep in the pockets of his jeans (they fit, somehow), but he doesn’t seem the least phased by cold.

“You live near here?” Niall asks, turning to Harry.

Harry turns to him.

Niall’s cheeks are red, the tip of his nose is red, his mouth is red, and the cold does something amazingly bright to the blues of his eyes. Niall’s often tired, with blistered fingers and a bad knee, studying what he doesn’t really want, a bit lost and more than a bit in need of a decent haircut. There’s shaggy blonde hair peeking out beneath his beanie; he looks very young.

Youth means life, and life makes Harry weak.

Harry hasn’t ever seen Niall the way Harry sees him now, as something more than just the sum of his parts. Right now it’s more about seeing someone really **alive** , and realizing how that someone really _is_ alive, that they think and they feel and they do, and it’s Outrite Niall in front of the Outrite Donut at 4:30 AM in the month of October.

Harry actually gasps, and his scarf almost falls away to reveal a face not red with cold, and no frosty dragon exhales, and his teeth not chattering.

Niall tilts his head and frowns.

“It’s a far walk?” he tries instead, and Harry gulps.

“No,” Harry says. “No, it’s not far at all. I live right around the corner there.”

He nods beyond Niall, and Niall glances over his shoulder and remarks “ah.”

Niall gets the same kind of pastry that Harry brings him every morning, causing Harry to bite down on his smile and twirl on his twinkle toes. When Niall moves aside for him, Harry backs off and says, “I’m good.”

“You haven’t eaten all night.”

“No, I’m—I’m good.”

Niall turns back to the counter and orders one more of what he’s having, just in case Harry is secretly poor and doesn’t want anyone else to know. After he hands off the pastry, it occurs to him that Harry actually has enough money to buy him breakfast every morning. His vintage, oversized sweater is probably ten times nicer than Niall’s windbreaker, too.

Then Niall feels bad because _maybe_ Harry has an eating-in-front-of-people phobia that he doesn’t want anyone else to know about, and the way Harry stares at the pastry in his hand like he has no idea what to do with it sort of makes Niall think _maybe_ that’s it.

“I’ll, uh… okay,” Niall mumbles. “You’re really not hungry?”

Harry shakes his head. His scarf’s down around his neck, and unlike the rest, his face isn’t sweaty after the walk.

“I am. Hungry,” Niall says. “M’always hungry. I’ll eat that.”

Harry hands the pastry over, and then Niall feels like an even bigger idiot for probably embarrassing Harry and now he’s got _two_ pastries while everyone else has _one_ and he’s terrible at socializing.

“There’s probably a, uh, animal that’ll eat it. Or something,” Niall says. “Some homeless one.”

Now Harry looks pained.

“I can take it,” he offers. “And eat it later. I’ve just got a stomachache right now, is all. But I’m sure it’s good!”

“A stomachache?” Niall frowns. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s not a _bad_ stomachache—”

But it’s too late: Niall’s already asking around if anyone has Tums, Pepto Bismol, or anything like that. Even the girl at the counter says she’ll check and see if they have anything.

Couch boy has his pockets turned out, and Zayn is very interested in the linty contents when the girl at the counter returns, apologizing that it looks like they don’t have anything for stomachaches. She does insist on handing Harry a Styrofoam cup of water, and Harry’s stuttering “it’s all right, it’s all right, I’m fine” over and over.

They’re all relieved to get back into the cold, Harry especially.

“If you throw that water outta the cup, right into the air, it’ll freeze ‘fore it hits the ground,” couch boy tells him.

Pretentious Liam, who’s been pondering the meaning of their existence the entire way, rolls his eyes and sighs, “That’s only with _boiling_ water, and it’s not _cold_ enough to do that here, anyway.”

“Tch.” Couch boy waves Petulant Liam off. “Obviously, we all knew that. I just wanted to see if Harry’d do it.”

“ **I** didn’t know that,” Zayn pipes up, frowning at the couch boy. He turns and smiles at Liam. “That’s _amazing_.”

Liam’s been playing with an unlit cigarette all night, but it’s only then that he can take no more. He grumbles something, reaches for his Zippo, lights up and promptly begins smoking while glaring out into the distance.

“You all right?” Niall murmurs, sidling up to Harry.

Harry’s fist clenches in his pocket. The other clenches around the Styrofoam cup, and all the water runs down his wrist.

“…It’s that bad? The stomachache?” Niall asks, feeling immensely guilty. “D’you wanna go home? I could walk with you—”

“ _No_ ,” Harry chokes, voice all strangled. “No, I’m…”

Niall reaches out, and his fingers accidentally graze Harry’s arm where the sweater’s pushed up.

Harry drops his smashed cup, clenches his teeth and pulls his arms in, hugging himself.

“You’re _freezing_!” Niall recoils, already shrugging out of his feeble windbreaker. “Here, I’m fine. You go ahead—”

“I’m just… I’ll go home.” Harry turns on the tattered heel of one boot right as Zayn calls, “Look at that dog!”

Niall offers Harry the windbreaker, Liam smokes and looks where Zayn indicates, couch boy squeezes all the jelly out of his doughnut, a stray blue Catahoula Leopard crosses the street, and a single car speeds down the road.

“The dog—!” Zayn cries.

“The car!” Liam drops his cigarette.

Harry, couch boy and Niall all freeze, turn as one towards the road, and there’s this horrible _whump_ and the tinkling of a shattered headlight, followed by a screeching that comes either from the car or the dog.

The car swerves and keeps going, and the dog is a crumpled mess flung off near the sidewalk’s edge.

Couch boy drops his empty jelly doughnut. He’s the first to the road, and the dog’s head is already resting on his leg when the other four reach him.

Harry hangs back, scarf pulled over his nose.

“He’s alive,” couch boy’s saying, petting the dog’s head.

Zayn kneels at the dog’s side, Liam kneels at Zayn’s side, and Niall crouches beside the couch boy and puts his hand on the dog’s face.

“He’s got a broken leg,” Zayn murmurs. “Or two. I’m… I don’t know…”

“She’s got two-and-a-half broken,” Liam says, eyes strangely bright and bristling like an angry dog himself. He looks after the car’s fading taillights, almost like he’s contemplating chasing it down.

“S’okay, s’okay,” couch boy murmurs, scratching the dog’s ears, and the dog keeps crying and trying to move.

Niall holds it down.

Dramatic Liam sighs, and his hair relaxes before beginning: “‘Death leaves a heartache no one can heal—’”

“ _No!_ ” snaps couch boy.

“We’ve gotta get him to a vet,” Niall murmurs.

“I’ve got a car,” Harry says.

The four crouched in the street turn to the sidewalk where Harry stands alone, scarf covering the lower half of his face.

Couch boy passes the dog’s head to Niall’s lap, gets up and sprints to Harry.

“C’mon! Where’s it at?”

Harry points with his thumb, and couch boy grabs hold of his sweater and pulls him along, running them both down the walk.

Niall’s terrified the dog’s going to just die before they get back. Its eyes are shut, and it’s no longer whining. Zayn’s taken off his jacket, and he presses it to the blood across the dog’s chest. Liam helps him hold it down, some rumbling hum deep in his chest, and Niall cradles the dog’s head and rubs circles against its shoulder.

He thinks it’s been way too long by the time he hears a car horn, and he and Zayn and Liam all gather up the dog as best they can to load it into the backseat.

Niall expects Harry in the driver’s seat, but it’s the other guy instead.

“Guy’s terrified of blood, apparently,” couch boy explains. “How’s our boy?”

“Not good,” Zayn says, and Niall says, “He just gave you his car and _left_?”

“Yeah.”

Couch boy peels out, and Liam already has his phone and directs them to the nearest emergency vet clinic.

The dog drools all over Niall’s leg. He offers it the pastry, figuring if the dog’s already a goner, some sugar’s not going to hurt.

The dog licks at the frosting. Pathetically, and a bit like Niall in the morning.

Niall watches it try to eat; it’s skinny enough as is, and he holds the pastry closer.

Like the others, he’s worried and nervous and tense, but at the same time, he can’t fathom what kind of person hands off his keys to an essential stranger and leaves a dying animal in the hands of three more.

And he doesn’t _want_ to be angry about that, but he is.

Couch boy pulls into the parking lot and takes up the two front spaces. Somehow, he’s out of the car and waiting before the other three even have the chance to open a door.

They use Zayn’s jacket as a makeshift stretcher. Liam gets the door, and the couch boy bustles in ahead, proclaiming that they require **immediate attention** and to have the first available room ready.

“Name?” the receptionist drawls, and he’s in the middle of writing out something when he looks up and sees Niall, Zayn and Liam stagger in holding a bleeding, broken dog.

“ _What is that?!_ ”

“I **told** you,” couch boy says. “We have an **_emergency_**.”

“This way. Into **this room**. _Hurry_.”

The receptionist opens the first door, yelling for a doctor.

The dog is placed on the table in the center, all four boys surrounding.

“You might’ve _called_ first, maybe?” the receptionist grumbles at Liam. “What even _is_ that thing?”

Liam uses the expression that says he doesn’t have nor will he give the time of day, and starts playing with another unlit cigarette, pacing the room like a caged wolf.

“Don’t let it _drip all over the_ _floor_! It’s just been waxed!”

Even Zayn shoots the receptionist a nasty look. Niall catches the tail end, and he’s never seen Zayn pull anything less than his resting face (glazed eyes and a vacant smile.)

“We’ll need to set up a payment—”

“Skive off a bit, yeah?” couch boy hisses.

The receptionist gives him a very Liam-like look (and Liam gives the receptionist his superior version in return) before skiving off.

“S’all right,” Zayn murmurs, petting the dog’s head.

Niall taps his foot, angry and impatient.

The vet finally arrives following a mandatory five-minutes-of-suspense wait. Except it’s actually the nurse, and she says, “Oh. It really is an emergency, then” before backing out.

Couch boy glares at Liam.

“Did you even ‘Yelp’ the place ‘fore directing me to it?”

“Good things take time,” Liam retorts. “Something we didn’t have.”

The couch boy retrieves his phone just as presumed veterinarian comes in.

“He’s suffering,” Zayn prompts, again with the strange glare Niall’s never seen before.

“Right, right. Of course.”

The vet has a stethoscope, and couch boy glances up from his phone to remark, “Really? What’s that going to do for broken legs?”

“I understand you’re frustrated,” the vet replies, listening to the dog’s back. “But rest assured, we’ll do all money can buy for your pet. We accept cash, check, money order, Discover, Master Card, Visa—”

“We’ll pay up when you take care of the dog,” Niall puts in, and couch boy (still ‘yelping’ the place) gives him a nod of agreement.

“Please, wait outside,” the vet says. “I don’t want to move her anymore; we’ll do the surgery in here.”

“Wait outside?” couch boy says, right as Zayn says, “ _Her?_ ”

His smooshy smile returns, and he turns to Liam.

“She’s a girl!”

“Yeah.”

“How _are_ we going to pay up, though?” Niall mutters to couch boy as they file out of the operating room, filled with fresh anxiety. He’s rattled enough as it is, and then couch boy’s not even paying him any attention.

“ _One-and-a-half stars?!_ ” he exclaims instead, glaring at Liam. “You’ve really gone and picked the absolute **worst** vet possible!” He glances down and reads: “‘Receptionist was _extremely_ rude and didn’t seem to care about my animal’s well-being at all.’ **That** is us! And this review’s _two paragraphs_ long! That’s only the first sentence—”

Liam heads outside with another cigarette.

“That’s it: slunge off,” couch boy mutters, pocketing his phone and giving Liam’s back a dirty look. “I dunno how you put up with that guy,” he tells Zayn and Niall.

“He’s great,” Zayn says right as Niall says, “I don’t.”

Niall’s phone buzzes. It irritates him even more, and he ignores it, all terse and jumpy.

In a minute, it buzzes again. Taking it out from his pocket, he has two texts from an unknown number. The first reads: _How’s the dog? H_

The second: _It’s Harry, by the way. H_ And then another comes in explaining (rather unnecessarily, Niall thinks) _from the art of self-awareness. H_

He sees Harry writing out a fourth text while he sits there debating on what to say (or if he even wants to say anything.)

_I had your number saved from that time we almost studied for the first quiz. H_

Niall vaguely remembers that.

_So… just checking up. H_

Finally, Niall responds: _whys there h after eveyrthing you say?_

Harry replies: _Why is your autocorrect turned off? H_

“So,” the receptionist says, typing away at the desk. “I’m generating your bill—”

“ _Generating our bill?_ ” couch boy sputters, and Niall stashes away his phone. “You’ve not even done anything yet!”

“As of now, your estimated total reads in at £1,214. This doesn’t include the—”

“Lemme see that.”

Couch boy is already at the receptionist’s desk.

The receptionist gives him a glare in return.

“Please, stop interrupting me, sir.”

Couch boy reads over the bill, and Niall and Zayn peer over his shoulder.

“ _Pet not microchipped -_ £58?” Zayn says, frowning.

“Yeah, that’s gotta come off,” couch boy agrees. “And what’s this ‘general health inspection’ here?”

“That was the nurse assessing your pet, sir.”

“The _nurse assessing…?!_ The nurse took one look at us and called in a **surgeon**.”

“Yes, sir. And that assessment is included in your grand total.”

“But why’s that £75?!”

“It’s the standard fee.”

“Sir,” Zayn butts in, moving in front of the couch boy. He summons up his absolute best, most soulful teddy bear smile. “Please, try to understand. We’re students, all of us terribly poor. Is there _any_ way we can be offered some kind of a discount? Anything at all.”

“£55,” the receptionist states, moving aside a stack of messy files.

“£55?” Zayn stutters. “£55 _off_ or £55 total?”

“Total.”

Zayn’s eyes flood with love and he covers his mouth. “ _Thank you_ , sir—”

“That’s only the basic euthanasia fee; disposal of the remains is extra.”

Zayn frowns, tilts his head and adjusts his glasses.

“Remains?” he says.

“I can offer you our urn catalogue…”

The receptionist is retrieving a magazine devoted to decorative pet urns when Ferocious Liam returns, scowling and thunderous.

“Don’t even **think** about it,” he growls, moving between Zayn and the counter, and Niall gargles at the assaulting overabundance of angry _Beast_ and pulls his windbreaker over his nose.

The receptionist sighs and chucks the magazine across a cluttered desk.

“You wanted options,” he says, gesturing. “I gave you options.”

Couch boy is grumbling and taking out his wallet.

“May I have the owner’s name, please?” the receptionist asks, looking expectantly at couch boy, fingers poised above the keyboard.

“Tomlinson,” couch boy replies, opening all the flaps in his tattered, duct tape wallet.

“First name?”

“Louis. With an ‘s.’”

“L-O-I-S?”

“Not _Lois_. **Louis** ,” Louis says, setting out one credit card at a time, all in a row (he has nine.) He turns to Zayn, Liam and Niall. “A’ight, lads. Got anything to spare?”

Zayn contributes his debit card, and Liam silently sets a quartet of twenties down.

Feeling more than a bit guilty, Niall empties out his pockets: a single five-pound note, a £10 gift card, and all the change he happened across that week.

“I’ll pay you more once we’re back—”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” Louis says.

The receptionist eyes their motley payment in disgust.

“And what’s all this…?”

“We’re splitting the bill, bud,” Louis says.

“My debit card’s good for £100,” Zayn supplies. “I think.”

Liam throws in his pack of cigarettes, raising an eyebrow at the receptionist.

“I’ll take ten off,” the receptionist mutters, making the minor adjustment. Only when he starts on Louis’s cards does he begin: “As every other clinic will tell you, there is no 100% guarantee that your animal can always be saved. Rest assured, our surgeons will do their absolute best to ensure—really? This card took about £5 before it maxed…”

Louis tilts his head. “Like Zayn said: we’re quite poor.”

The entire transaction takes 30 minutes, and Louis will be “billed the difference.”

They spend the rest of the morning sleeping in a vet waiting room that reeks of dog piss, vomit and death. Niall texts Harry _it’s expensive_ and nothing more. He’s still mad. Or annoyed, or something. He doesn’t know why he bothered telling him anything at all, and he turns his phone off and falls asleep in a pile of Rugged Liam the Philosophy Major, Zayn and Louis Tomlinson. He has beautiful dreams when he manages to fall asleep.

* * *

The dog has to stay overnight at the vet’s, but the first surgery goes well.

Sometime around noon, Zayn, Liam, Niall and Louis Tomlinson pile into Zayn and Liam's place to eat warmed-up Chinese food in last night’s clothes. They’re finishing up when Louis declares, “I have nowhere to live.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Louis rubs his eyes and yawns. “I guess whoever dropped me off here last night left without me.”

Zayn, Liam and Niall all stare.

“I’m a drifter,” Louis explains. “Nothing to my name ‘cept the clothes on my back and that grunge knapsack over there.”

“What d’you have nine credit cards for?” Niall asks, thinking Louis Tomlinson could possibly be a fugitive identity theif.

“They’re all those ‘free student offer’ ones you get in the mail,” Louis says. “I send ‘em all off whenever I go back home ‘cause they always mail me so many.”

Zayn’s eyes widen. “You know those charge _terrible_ interest, don’t you?”

Louis yawns and scratches his chest.

“You can live with me,” Niall says.

Niall’s previous roommate stayed for about a week before he decided he was homesick and returned home. Presumably to join the circus, Niall likes to think.

“I knew you were one of the good ones,” Louis tells him, and promises, “You won’t even know I’m there.”

Not that Niall would mind if he knew Louis was there.

He leaves Louis Tomlinson to it once they return to the dorm, and he tries to sleep.

Niall doesn’t sleep too well. He thinks he might be afraid of the dark because he can fall asleep just fine in class, reading a book, at a computer, studying in the library, but nighttime in his bed is near impossible. It’s too _quiet_ , and everything’s all _still_ , and he’s just lying there watching the clock and thinking about how many hours of sleep he’s not going to get.

It happens again, though.

Niall has nice dreams when he can get any real sleep, but he has these extremely vivid dreams every fortnight or so. Always when his sleeplessness becomes too great to bear, when he’s sure he’s cracked, a goner, yesterday’s news.

They’re also embarrassing.

They’re kind of sexy.

They tend towards tingly flowers of overflowing nectar, lots of licking, humidity, warm pressures, biting.

And whenever he wakes up next morning, he feels way too hot and his bedcovers are all twisted and he’s all sensitive and sweaty, but he has a fantastic sleep, and it’s easier to sleep for a few days right after. It’s probably the only thing that keeps him going until the next two weeks.

It’s different when he wakes up this time. The dreams usually run their full course ( _in the dream_ ), but this one doesn’t. He never wakes up until it’s all played through, and then it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

He wakes up this time because he sits up cold, and he’s panting and shaking and sweating and doesn’t know where he is.

It’s confusing when he realizes he’s in his bed. And then he realizes he’s just had a dream, and then he realizes that he woke up _too_ soon from the dream, and then he realizes that his room reeks of C. Howard’s Violet candies.

He wrinkles his nose and sniffs. He definitely knows the smell of C. Howard’s Violet candies; he has to smell them every morning.

But maybe he dreamed the smell, because it seems to fade quick as the flowery things in his sleep.

Niall grimaces and flops back down, and he realizes that _maybe_ he woke up too early because Harry’s now invading his subconscious with breath mints.

That’s all Niall needs: his one good sleep every two weeks disrupted by the guy in the class with the teeth who signs his texts and doesn’t eat and is afraid of blood.

Niall’s door opens, and he has another miniature freak-out, but it’s only Louis Tomlinson peering in.

“ _Sorry_ ,” Louis whispers. “Did I scare you?”

“What’re you whispering for?” Niall mumbles. “M’already awake…”

“Sorry,” Louis says in his normal tone (almost a yell.)

Niall flinches and shuts his eyes.

“I went out to pick up some things for breakfast,” Louis continues. “Guess I shut the door a little too hard! It didn’t break, did it?”

“Did _what_ break?”

Louis tilts his head.

“I heard something fall,” he says, walking uninvited into Niall’s closet-sized bedroom. He drops down on all fours and exclaims, “Ah! This.”

Louis straightens, and he’s holding up Niall’s acoustic.

While Niall frowns, Louis examines the guitar and says, “Sorry, roomie. Guess I shut the door _so_ hard it knocked this over; you oughta talk to the landlord about these walls. Where d’you keep it?”

Louis waves the guitar back-and-forth as he turns, looking for a safe place to put it down, and Niall starts forward and falls out of bed.

“You’ve gotten it all out of tune now,” he groans with his face pressed into the carpet, the smell of C. Howard’s Violet candies forgotten.

“So you actually play this and it’s not just for show?”

Niall mumbles something against the floor. He spots a loose bit of change, at least, and reaches out for it.

Louis Tomlinson sits down and rests the guitar on his lap, and Niall hears the twang of an out-of-tune attempt at a chord.

“ _Stop_ ,” Niall says. “Sounds terrible.”

“You play something, then, if you’re so good.”

Louis Tomlinson gets pretty defensive pretty fast.

“I can give you my rendition of Wonderwall,” Niall sighs.

It gets Louis to leave the guitar alone, and Niall picks himself up from the floor and yawns.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“Six. I was about to make breakfast.”

“ _Six?_ I slept into tomorrow?”

“ **No**.” Louis tilts his head back to shake some hair out of his eyes. “Six in the _evening_ ; it’s still Saturday, smarty-pants.”

“Then why…? What’re you doing making _breakfast_ for?”

“I invited over your neighbors.” Louis smiles, but it’s gone in a second. “They’re smart. We should be able to hatch… a _plan_.”

“A plan?”

“To get me out of all this debt.”

“Ah.”

Niall wants to go back to sleep.

Instead, he trudges into the kitchen, puts the kettle on, puts some Irish Breakfast into the teapot and sits at the counter waiting, all while Louis Tomlinson babbles nonstop and scrambles eggs. Also turns all of Niall’s sliced bread into toast.

When the kettle whistles, Niall heaves another sigh, scratches his back and tugs his joggers down just a little too low.

Louis skitters over and bumps Niall out of the way before Niall can pour the water.

“Hold up there, roomie!” Louis says, reaching into the teapot and plucking out the teabags. He replaces them with Yorkshire, and Niall picks himself up off the floor and pours the water once Louis moves aside.

Niall replaces the discarded Irish Breakfast in the pantry.

When Zayn simply enters, Louis Tomlinson remarks, “I figured we’d just leave the door open, y’know? More constructive for creative thought.”

Niall grunts something at the counter.

Zayn carries a delicate mesh cage, trying to move quick as he can while causing the least amount of stress to its tenants.

“Niall!” he cries. “They’ve **emerged**! They’ve metamorphosed! It happened while we were at the vet’s!”

“Where’s the other guy?” Louis asks, looking over Zayn’s shoulders.

“Right here,” Freshly-shaven Liam grumbles, taking the seat right next to Niall.

Niall moves away a chair, not bothering to be discrete about it.

“Not _you_.” Louis throws Liam a sour look. “Curly. Curly with the car. The lad.”

“Harry?”

For some reason, the other three turn and stare at Niall soon as he says the name.

“He’s in my class,” Niall mutters, turning away.

“ _Whoa_.” Louis leaves Zayn alone and bounds over to Niall. “What happened to your _neck_?”

“My neck?” Niall says.

Louis seizes a handful of Niall’s hair and angles his head sideways, and Zayn comes nearer as well.

“I thought I smelled something,” Liam says without looking, blowing on a steamy cup of Yorkshire. “Careful, Zayn. Don’t let the dinginess rub off on you.”

“ _Dinginess?_ ” Niall glares, and Zayn innocently asks, “Were you bitten by a brown recluse?”

“ **A brown recluse?** ” Niall struggles to escape Louis’s hold. “Lemme up!”

“A _brown recluse_?” Louis Tomlinson says, releasing Niall and turning to glare at Zayn. “Really? You think he’d be acting perfectly fine sitting here with a **brown recluse bite**?”

Niall stumbles off his seat and heads to the bathroom, one hand holding his neck. He flips the light switch and takes a long look at his brown recluse bite, pushing all his shaggy hair aside.

He has the most massive hickey in every sickly shade of green and purple he never knew existed, and he can’t help the face he pulls at his reflection and the abomination on his neck, the shiver down to his bare feet that shuffle against the tile.

He actually feels nauseous, and he wonders if that’s the deadly venom coursing through his bloodstream.

“You think it was a spider?” he asks, exiting the bathroom and rubbing at the bruise.

Zayn pushes his glasses up, crossing his arms. “Looks like a spider bite to me.”

Louis Tomlinson looks at all corners of the kitchen and presses his knuckles against his lips. “We live in a flat infested with spiders…?”

“Infested with _something_ ,” Liam mumbles, smirking as he takes a drink of tea.

Zayn runs to put a comforting arm on his shoulder when he burns his tongue, swallows the wrong way and goes into a coughing fit.

“You feel sick?” Louis asks Niall.

“It looks kinda sick, doesn’t it?” Niall says, covering the mark with his hand and hunching his shoulders.

“Sick,” Louis agrees, nodding his approval.

“I have a special batch of spiders on mail-order,” Zayn offers. “They’re of the pest-control variety, even on other spiders. They’ll clean out your place real quick.”

Louis’s admiration turns into annoyance, and he rounds on Zayn.

“And then how will we get rid of those?” he asks.

Zayn shrinks back beside Liam. “Why would you want to get rid of friendly spiders…?”

“How’s our dog?” Liam sighs once he’s sufficiently recovered.

“Paw Paw Squat?” Louis says, and adds, “That’s her name now. Named the _best_ dog after the best musicians of our generation—”

“Terrible band,” Liam mutters, scrolling through his phone. “Terribly fitting, coming from you.”

Niall doesn’t particularly like Paw Paw, either, and he hopes this doesn’t mean Louis’s going to have their music on play all the time, but he doesn’t miss an opportunity to disagree with Liam.

“Coming from you,” he says, “that must make Paw Paw even better than The Eagles!”

It’s a ludicrous statement that Resigned Liam doesn’t even bother replying to. He does bristle a bit.

Louis gives Niall a friendly punch to the shoulder, and Niall feels a warm grow in his chest where his cold heart resides, and Zayn is too busy fawning over his butterflies to defend Liam.

Louis Tomlinson holds up his hands.

“Paw Paw Squat is, in fact, better than The Beatles, but Paw Paw can’t float us any cash for any of this staggering debt.”

Zayn looks up from his mesh enclosure, Liam sets aside his phone, and Niall stops rubbing at his brown recluse bite.

Louis Tomlinson looks at them all in turn before presenting the question: “How do we come up with £1000?”

Zayn’s shoulders slump. Niall sighs. Liam yawns.

“I propose… a _fundraiser_ ,” Louis says.

“Great start,” Liam mutters.

“It’s almost Halloween; we do a Halloween party.” Louis smacks his fist against his palm. “Paw Paw’s outta the vet by then. She’s a cute girl behind blue eyes, and we have her here so everyone can see her, and then everyone puts in a bit and presto! bill’s paid.”

“‘Enhance your karma by engaging in various charitable events,’” Liam states in a low growl, and then scoffs, “Why I put up with all _you_ —”

“How many people are we inviting?” Niall asks.

“Anyone.” Louis shrugs. “The more the better. So we’ll need… a _place_.”

“Here’s fine,” Niall offers.

“Great! And food…” Louis looks expectantly to Zayn, who looks admiringly at his Painted Ladies.

“ **Food** ,” Louis repeats. “Where can we find food?”

“Our Chinese place caters,” Liam says, staring out at the world with eyes unclouded by hate.

“I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a Brewmaster,” Louis adds. “Finest brew on this side of the Atlantic, Tommo Guarantee.”

* * *

It’s not like Niall’s really angry with Harry.

He just doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so strongly towards him.

Harry knows all about the big fundraising party; Louis Tomlinson’s made a group text with all five of them in the days leading up to the huge party.

Harry would know all about the huge fundraising party, anyway, because Louis Tomlinson drew up about a thousand flyers that are taped all over campus. And then a dozen “university-recognized organizations” all jumped onboard because everyone desperately needs some sort of extracurricular to put on a resume and “saved a dog” seems pretty cool. The mangas drew manga dogs, the gamers are “raiding for Paw Paw,” the pre-meds are handing out brochures all about what veterinary surgery entails, the animal rescue kids are protesting stray animals and hit-and-runs in general, and everyone else is probably doing something else.

“I think, Nialler, that this is going to be a spectacular success,” Louis Tomlinson says.

Liam’s got free catering (and at least four other places have expressed interest), and Louis’s Brewmaster has a U-Haul to deliver a wide enough variety certain to please everyone.

“‘Course, his isn’t _entirely_ out of charity,” Louis tells Niall about the Brewmaster, following him around in the hallways. “But we’re bound to make back whatever we put in, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“A’right, roomie! I’ll be seeing ya ‘round, eh?”

“Yeah.”

Niall manages to shake Louis Tomlinson without being followed into class again (he’s got Niall’s schedule memorized, unfortunately, and also has one class with him, quite unfortunately.)

And then it’s Harry, who intimidates Niall even more than the cool Louis Tomlinson.

Harry’s been a bit weird ever since that night, too: he now has a perpetual case of the sniffles and watery eyes.

“Allergies,” he manages before Niall even asks, turning away and burying his nose in the arm of his oversized sweater.

Niall’s been sleeping even worse ever since the brown recluse incident, and he mirrors Harry’s position. The smell of C. Howard’s Violet candies doesn’t sit so well with him anymore, but he doesn’t understand why.

Harry peels a blood orange and leaves it sitting between them. Maybe to help keep Niall awake. Maybe because Niall doesn’t like the smell of C. Howard’s Violet candies.

“How’s Paw Paw?” Harry asks sometime, throat raw.

“Getting better,” Niall says, ready to cry at just the thought.

Paw Paw’s casts smell, and she lives in the dorm now, and she makes it a point to hobble along right in Niall’s way whenever he tries to get anywhere. She likes to sleep right in front of Niall’s door, so it takes him five minutes to ease it open, and then she howls and whines if he jostles any leg (including the one-and-a-half not wrapped in casts) just so Louis comes running, ready to attack the one causing his “babe” any harm. And then Niall has to step over the both of them because they have impromptu messy hugs all over the place; Louis loves snuggling Paw Paw and Paw Paw loves to be snuggled (by Louis) and suddenly her legs don’t hurt at all.

Niall thinks Paw Paw is really annoying. Paw Paw loves Louis, but she acts like the most spoiled brat around Niall. She won’t even eat anything he tries to give her: halves of sandwiches, gourmet doggie treats, bowls of milk, but she’ll eat _anything_ touched by Louis, including the things that aren’t edible. And Niall’s given up on telling Louis that he doesn’t really want a dog licking all the plates clean once Louis’s done with them.

She hasn’t growled at him yet, at least.

“M’dead,” Niall moans, pressing his forehead against the desk, shoulders heaving. “For real this time. This is it. I’m a goner.”

Harry lifts his head out of his sweater. He really tries to clamp up _everything_ , to not taste any bit of the air. It’s completely useless, and his eyes are smarting and his mouth is burning. He reaches a tentative hand out, hovering over Niall’s back. He sets it down (gently, he hopes) and Niall flinches so violently he falls out of his seat.

Harry falls after him, and instead of them both climbing back up into their seats because everyone is staring, Harry asks underneath the desk, “You okay?”

Niall’s on his back, and Harry’s leaned over him, mouth open in surprise, eyebrows raised, long hair a little messed. Niall blinks and scrabbles backwards against the floor, that weird, warning feeling telling him to _get away_.

Harry puts a hand on his shoulder, sniffles and asks, “Niall? Are you okay?”

“I’m **fine**.” That wave of C. Howard’s Violet candies gets up Niall’s nose and in his mouth, and he turns and coughs, and Harry leans even closer, gasping.

“Niall…? What happened… to _your neck?_ ”

“S-spider bite,” Niall says, his voice shaking all over the place, shivering because Harry’s extremely cold fingers are right over the spot. It feels _personal_ , way too personal for someone to just be almost touching his neck (Louis manhandled him just day before yesterday) and Niall grits, “Harry, your hands’re _cold_.”

“Sorry.”

Harry pulls his hand back, blinks and looks away to hide his face, but before all his crazy, curly hair falls in the way, Niall sees a wounded pull in Harry’s expression. How sparkly his eyes get, how pouty his mouth goes, the turn of his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers.

He straightens, hurries to climb back into his seat. Niall puts his hand down on about £2 of change, gathering it up before he follows suit, ignoring all the stares from his classmates, thankful that Professor Plum is so into the Art of Self-Awareness that the drone still drones.

Harry pushes Niall’s breakfast pastry towards Niall. Niall pretends he doesn’t see, resting his head in his hand and covering half his face, acting like he’s writing notes when he doesn’t have any idea as to what they’re in the middle of.

* * *

Louis Tomlinson is in Niall’s anthropology class. Louis maintains an effortless “B” despite not having the faintest idea of what’s going on.

They’re learning the so-called “bog people” who died in swamps and became naturally mummified as a result. Right now it’s one named Tollund Man, who died back in 4th century BCE Scandinavia.

“That is _so_ sick,” Louis whispers to Niall.

“It is, kinda…”

“Guy’s over two thousand years old.”

“Yeah.”

Louis lowers his voice. “But Niall, what if you _were_ the body being thrown into the swamp? And you’re like ‘someone’s gonna find me later on in a thousand years.’”

“…What?”

“Look at that!” Louis exclaims, eyes aglow from the projector.

“Is Harry invited?”

Louis turns to give Niall a disgruntled look. “ _Everyone’s_ invited. And anyway, Harry’s bringing the _scary movies_.”

“ _Scary_ movies?” Niall repeats in a whisper.

“ **Scary** movies.” Louis nods, biting his lower lip.

That’s all Niall needs: more reasons to not be able to sleep.

He can’t help wondering what sort of strange movies someone like Harry would consider scary, either. Probably a cult classic kind of guy… or ones in different languages. Niall’s not sure if French people do horror, but if they do, Harry’s probably seen them all.

It’s Halloween night, so the party is a costume affair. Also it’s a masquerade, mystery manor and roleplay, all at once. Time travel, tumblers, Physics and Astronomy majors simulating zero gravity in a bouncy castle, chemists concocting liquid nitrogen ice cream, and a Macbeth performance from the drama majors with a plethora of witches and ghosts, also added mummies, scarecrows and some fairies.

Louis Tomlinson’s bumming around somewhere. He’s decided he’s the Great Gatsby for Halloween; Niall thinks it’s because he wants to walk around raising a flute to everyone, and also because Louis thinks he looks fantastic in a tuxedo. Paw Paw Squat has become a butterfly; she fits in with Zayn’s theme (who is still a caterpillar) and has all of the Painted Ladies on display.

Paw Paw’s overflowing tip jar is here, and Liam hovers nearby as some Marlon Brando in _The Wild One_ thing, chewing up an unlit cigarette, sparing quick glances at the moon every now and then.

Zayn has something from the Brewmaster, but Liam doesn’t drink on account of a damaged kidney or a nonexistent kidney (Niall can’t remember which.) He’s loopy enough sober, anyway.

Niall’s had a face paint, and he’s borrowed a pair of feathery angel wings from Liam.

“I’m sorry,” the girl says when she shows him a mirror after. “That’s the only one I know how to do!”

Niall is some sort of glittery emo angel-fairy because it’s colder and he has a hoodie on, and his jeans are worn out with a hole in the knee, and he can’t afford new shoes so his Converse are all scuffed.

He doesn’t care to see what scary movies Harry’s brought. He doesn’t see Harry at all, actually.

Niall wonders if that’s why he’s wandering. He sees mysteries aplenty: masks, partysuits and fantastic face paints, but he knows none of them are Harry. He doesn’t expect to find him among all the smashed at the Oktoberfest booth with Louis Tomlinson’s Brewmaster, but he navigates through it anyway.

And someone hands him another beer, so it’s good.

He’s downed it by the time he bumps into Old Gatsby, and Gatsby greets him with another toast of the flute.

“Ah, Old Sport,” Gatsby says. “Enjoying the party, Old Sport?”

“Have y’seen Harry?” Niall asks, slurring just a bit.

“Can’t say I have, Old Sport.” Gatsby swirls lukewarm champagne around his flute, turns and gazes out into the distance, searching for a Green Light at the end of a dock. He takes a sip. “Can’t say I have…”

“A’ight. I’m gonna keep looking.” Niall sets his empty bottle down, and Gatsby remarks, “We’ve met our goal, Old Sport.”

“We have?”

“Three times over, Old Sport. Three times over.”

Niall leaves.

He finds himself outside, not entirely sure why. He finds himself a ragged football, and he starts a kick-about, arms out for balance because he’s more than a little tipsy.

The world’s teetering, his head’s throbbing and the wings flap against his back with every heavy step. Niall dribbles the ball around, far out on the darkened lawn and away from the loudest noise of the party. The ground’s frozen solid, cold enough to feel wet and punch his feet right back, every step.

Niall stumbles to a stop, taps the ball to keep it. He steps back, winds up, and kicks.

He gets it with the side of his foot, and the arc’s not as perfect as he’d like. The ball skitters off haphazard into the dark, and Niall sighs and flops down on his back, forgetting about his wings and getting the wires all bent.

He exhales, watching his breath smoke away in the brunt of chilly stars, all of them sharp and frosty the way it isn’t in the summertime.

The ball comes rolling back.

Niall sits up and watches it slow to a stop.

He looks out into the dark where he sees a figure materializing. Tall, lanky and without grace.

Harry walks to him. Niall remains seated, but he does totter (just because he fell down doesn’t mean the ground’s stopped moving.)

Harry wears a collared cape, a waistcoat, billowy white shirt, black (tight) pants and shiny black boots. His mouth is painted bright red, edges curved in a painted smile, and his eyes are outlined in smudgy diamonds of grease makeup. When he grins at Niall, his pearly teeth are pointed. Harlequin Styles.

“What’re you doing all the way out here?” Niall asks.

“What’re _you_ doing all the way out here?”

“Playing footie.” Niall falls back into the grass.

“Then let’s play.”

Niall doesn’t know how drunk Harry is. He doesn’t know how drunk he is, either, but all those strange feelings he had towards Harry for the past weeks are gone. Actually, he has to struggle to recall _why_ he was so perturbed in the first place. Something about Paw Paw, maybe… except Paw Paw doesn’t like him anyway. So it really doesn’t matter, he thinks.

Or else a dream. It could’ve been the dream, and there was something strange about it.

Harry passes him the ball, and Niall is so fuzzed he can’t remember a dream. Any dreams.

Harry’s a dream standing right in front of him. Like a bag of m&m’s, Niall’s bleary mind says, forgetting all about bad dreams and dogs and C. Howard’s Violet candies. Because this is a _good_ dream happening right now, the best dream. Because there’s so many different Harrys that sometimes he’s blue and sometimes he’s red, green, brown, yellow, orange… and right when he’s one color, Niall realizes he’s another one until he’s every m &m all at once and all the Harrys is all Harry.

How is Harry so pouty he looks half his age, but then angle him just a little differently and he’s twice his age. He looks cuddly in one light, sharp in another. Pensive, like he never blinks, like he doesn’t have a little dimple that pops up when he’s cracking up like a four-year old and Niall doesn’t understand how he ever thought Harry looked serious.

Harry stops to fling off his cape.

Niall rocks in place to flutter his bent wings.

The billowy shirt pulls across Harry’s back, stretched tight over his shoulder blades when he chases Niall, attempts a sliding tackle. It makes him look giant, over seven feet tall, and then he goes tripping over his own feet like a baby giraffe, skittering after the ball and honking with laughs.

Niall stops in a daze, swaying to keep his balance, the goofiest, most blissful smile across his face, even worse than Zayn.

“Harry,” he announces. “ **Not dead** this time. Very smashed.”

“Smashed?” Harry tries to bounce the ball off his knee. He flounders after it.

Niall yawns and nearly loses his balance. He giggles. Harry giggles.

“That’s so cute,” Niall slurs, laughing until his eyes close.

Harry passes him the ball and Niall misses. Niall thinks it’s hilarious and chases after it, snorting and tripping over the grass.

Harry careens after him, and Niall reaches the ball first, stopping on his toes and leaning dangerously out.

Harry collides with his backside, and Niall falls forward.

Harry’s upper body follows, his ostrich legs right behind with a flip as elegant as Niall’s imaginary game-winning-kick, and Niall collapses into more snorting laughter, tangled up in Harry and Harry’s billowy shirt.

There’s that faint minty-violet smell, like the way Harry always smells. The hint of citrus, the smell of sea salt, an earthy, oaky smell like wine, and a crisp, cold cleanliness, like snow that no one’s walked in yet.

Niall’s laughing, Harry’s laughing, and it’s so nice that Niall doesn’t notice how he’s the only one with a breathy exhale, how there’s no sweat on Harry’s forehead, how Harry’s so cold, how bright Harry’s prosthetic fangs are.

Harry’s head falls forward, laughing against Niall’s chest. Niall braces a hand against Harry. It’s too nice to notice there’s no heartbeat under his palm. He can’t budge Harry at all, and he finds this hilarious.

Harry’s pink lips pull back in the widest grin Niall’s ever seen. The toothiest smile; Niall has the urge to reach out and touch both his fingers to the tips of Harry’s amazing, pointed teeth.

“You’re a vampire,” Niall mumbles, tilting his head back against the grass and laughing.

Harry’s watching the way Niall’s neck moves when he talks, when he swallows, when he laughs, how it looks right now with the fading bruise over the sweetest part of the jugular.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Harry says, lowering his head. “Yeah, I am.”

The edges of his mouth brush Niall’s neck, and Niall gulps beneath him, laughter dying in his throat.

The spell’s starting to fade, dream’s ended, the haze burning off like fog, and those same warning feelings return.

Harry’s lips are against his skin, and he feels Harry laughing still, but there’s no breath. There’s no warmth, not even from his tongue.

Niall blinks, because there _is_ a sharp edge and an overwhelming smell of cold, Harry’s hands holding him down, how he can’t even turn his head.

Harry’s mouth stops above the bruise, and he raises a hand to pull through Niall’s hair. His fingers curl at the ends, and what would’ve made Niall see shooting stars a minute ago now fills him with the same cold that is entirely Harry.

“H-hey…”

Harry tugs on Niall’s hair, and Niall presses against the sharp edge of Harry’s teeth that turns into a sharp pinch. He grabs handfuls of Harry’s billowy white shirt and tries to shove him away.

He can’t move Harry; he’s already tried.

“ _Harry?_ **_Harry_**.”

Niall shoves, punches sort of, and Harry miraculously lifts off, falling backwards.

To Niall’s surprise, Harry looks immensely frightened, all of that threatening cold gone and the green eyes wide and hurt.

Niall sees him shaking.

“M’sorry,” Harry blurts.

Niall’s hand is on his neck, covering the bruise, and he distances himself from Harry by scooting.

“Harry… you’re like a _real_ vampire?”

“Nuh-uh. No. No, I’m… I’m **really** into cosplay.” Harry’s scooting away, too.

“You… that **was** you in my room the other night!” Niall whispers, and Harry’s shoulders slump and his head lowers; he looks a bit like Paw Paw when Niall’s scolding her.

“No,” he begins weakly.

“The—those _breath mints_.” Niall gasps. “I **knew** it. And since then it’s been so off…”

“ _No_ ,” Harry insists. “Niall, it’s not like that.”

Niall’s sat up now, clutching his neck.

“Harry!? You’re drinking my _blood_?”

“ _No_ , not like that!” Harry hold out his hands, and Niall shrinks back further. “Not like that, Niall! I don’t wanna hurt you, I _promise_ I don’t.”

“But you _were_ in my room? The guitar…?” Niall glares. “ _You knocked over my Gibson SJ-200 Super Jumbo Antique?_ ”

“It was an accident!” Harry wails, and realizes right after that he’s given himself away for sure. He bows his head and his hands fall to the grass at his sides.

Niall shuts his eyes and shakes his head. “You’ve **got** to be more careful if you’re going to sneak around my room in the dark.”

He crosses his arms.

“Does blood taste good?” he asks.

He opens his eyes, looks around; Harry’s vanished. He looks for a bat flying away, but Harry’s not gone bat-form (Niall doesn’t think.)

“Harry?” Niall whispers, pulling his legs in closer. “Can vampires… can they go _invisible_? You still there?”

Niall looks around, but invisible Harry doesn’t say anything.

Niall touches his fading bruise, brushing his fingertips over. He’s not sure if it’s some remaining essence of magical vampire breath, or if he’s drunk still, but it makes him feel the strangest kind of kinship. It’s inexplicable; he should probably be mad, he thinks.

Harry’s been drinking his blood without his permission and sneaking into his room, knocking over his Gibson Jumbo.

But Harry’s the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to him.

* * *

Harry’s always been very honest. This makes being a vampire even more difficult. It’s hard enough being alive when you’re dead, so all vampires need some kind of drive; that’s why they’re all so insatiably thirsty.

But for Harry it’s not so much about the blood: it’s loneliness.

He’s too particular, way too selective, almost bored by his existence. He wants a quality that is next to impossible to find, and he’s unorthodox and experimental. During his first Blue Period, he gave the traditional route a go: haunting castles, sleeping upside-down, shying away from garlic and creeping graveyards. He's been organic, gone into “the biz,” become a famous musical composer under an assumed identity… all of it boring and all of it entirely not him.

He’d been bumming it for some time, kind of seeking someplace to settle and kind of not. He decided to bore himself at university for a while, ended up kind of enjoying it, decided to stick around, and that’s when Niall came along.

It started off simple enough: Niall’s roommate had gone, and Niall came from the far-off land of Ireland, pretty isolated person. Easy enough, easier that Harry had a class with him.

Being a vampire, Harry kept his interactions with the living impersonal; sitting next to the same living every day was something quite new.

Harry knew the living enjoyed gifts and food, so he presented Niall with a breakfast pastry every morning, expecting to earn his trust. What he didn’t expect was for the breakfast pastry to progress into a sort of protectiveness Harry didn’t know he possessed; suddenly he was straightening up Niall’s room in the middle of the night, making sure Niall didn’t forget his homework, resetting the alarm if Niall snoozed it too long, leaving him spare change so Niall had enough to eat, doing up Niall's backpack so he’d quit losing everything…

Maybe the blood strengthened the affinity. Niall was a genuinely nice person, very sweet. Harry had nasty drinks before, all sour and depressing, and he had the so-so drinks that were most common—and that’s life, undead or otherwise. He had those rare drinks that got him all buzzed like the living on alcohol, and then he had the Niall drinks where he took a bit of Niall’s personality and that empty, cold cavern in his chest felt a little less frosty…

Just the thought of Niall makes his entire mouth throb, and even with the embarrassment that was footie last night at the party, Harry has to bite into a blood orange.

Niall makes his fangs pop. Real bad. Like, embarrassingly bad.

He lays out on the roof of university where he goes sometimes, and here he is now with a blood orange stuck to his receding fangs, bemoaning his lack of self-control and how bad he’s got it and how it’s not just about the blood and why he can love someone so much if he doesn’t even have a heart.

He groans. His expression darkens. He blames the mishap on that Louis Tomlinson kid (and the Paw Paw mutt.) That delicious smell Niall _used_ to have is all tainted with whatever musk Tomlinson and Paw Paw exude. It makes Harry’s eyes sting and his throat itch.

And then there was the other night when Tomlinson barged in on him in the middle of everything and he left some hideous bruise on Niall and tripped over the boy’s most beloved possession. That _disruption_ ruined his carefully crafted schedule, so when he saw Niall at the party fluttering around in angel’s wings and more awake than 8 AM and not moaning about being dead, he went and embarrassed himself and ruined everything.

And now he should leave.

Harry sighs and hunches his shoulders: he doesn’t want to leave.

He doesn’t like being a vagabond. He likes university. He likes being a student, even if he already knows everything. He likes to laugh, and Niall makes him laugh. And feel warm, and cuddly, downright _lively_. Niall makes him feel, and a vampire who doesn’t feel loses touch with its humanity, and Harry doesn’t want to lose touch with that.

He’s so depressing.

It’s very late when Harry decides to walk down the side of the dorms, peeks through Niall’s window and discovers the bed empty. Tracking down Niall is easy; Harry’s developed a combined sense of smell, taste and feeling that enables him to find Niall so long as he keeps his mouth open and his ears alert.

Niall’s location sticks to the top of his mouth, and Harry gangles away to find him passed out near the field where they played.

* * *

Niall doesn’t remember getting to bed last night, but the next morning he wakes up in his bed. He’s been tucked in, and there’s even some change on the nightstand and a house of cards.

He knocks it over in the act of rolling out of bed, shimmies out of his jeans from last night and shuffles into the kitchen.

Disheveled Gatsby is already awake, sobbing into the pint of Niall’s ice cream that Niall thought he hid well enough in the freezer.

“What happened?” he asks, taking the seat next to Louis Tomlinson.

Louis lifts the spoon out of the pint, and the entire half-pint left comes out stuck to it.

He pauses and considers the ice cream, chin quivering, scoots the carton beneath his chin, hunches forward and makes headway.

“Should’a never trusted Liam with the money,” he whispers. “It’s **gone** , Niall. Someone… someone _stole it_. All of it!”

He quiets himself by biting off an entire mouthful of coffee ice cream, and Niall grimaces.

“Who?” Niall asks.

“D-dunno,” Louis replies, ice cream dribbling down his chin. “But I bet—I bet it was the _manga club_.”

“How’d the manga club get all Paw Paw’s money?” Niall’s eyes narrow. “Liam was right there. Zayn, too.”

Louis presses a hand over his face, and the ensuing sobs sound like a locomotive struggling to make it up a hill.

“…Weren’t they?” Niall asks, setting a roll of toilet paper next to Louis (for the runny nose; Niall doesn’t keep Kleenex.)

“Lotta good _that_ did,” Louis blubbers. “Guy has _one drink_ and goes completely off his head—”

“Liam drank?” Niall asks, incredulous.

“Uh-huh.” Louis blows his nose. “Terrible, I know.”

“But he can’t drink. He’s only got one kidney.”

Louis lowers the wadded toilet paper and sniffs, “You want to sell Liam’s kidney?”

“No.”

“Zayn had his _butterflies_ , and… and you know how he is with them. Dead to the rest of the world when butterflies is around.”

“Yeah.”

“And Liam, he… ran off. I dunno; guy’s wild. Now I’ll have to—m’gonna have to… become a _stripper_ ,” Louis wails, and shoves another spoonful of coffee ice cream into his mouth.

“Aw, Louis: don’t be like that.”

Louis stops eating to cry some more.

“C’mon,” Niall says. “We both know there’s no one on earth who’d pay to see it.”

“How much does plasma go for nowadays?” Louis asks, lifting his reddened and deadened gaze to Niall. “They can have it all; I’m dead, anyway. Donate my entire carcass off to science. Tell them I did it all for… _all for **Paw Paw**._ ”

He breaks down again, and Niall tears off another bit of the toilet paper.

“This is grave indeed,” Bedheaded, Scruffy Liam declares, taking a long draught of tea. “Let’s not forget that ‘meeting adversity well is the source of your strength.’”

“How long have you been there?” Niall mutters, eyes narrowed in annoyance. Liam’s got dirt all across his face, and his hair’s full of twigs and bits of leaves.

“We’ll have to make the money back ourselves,” Liam continues.

Niall pulls out the pocketful of spare change that appeared on his nightstand and sets it beside Louis.

“Well, there’s one pound,” Liam says, crossing his arms with a grim smile and a nod. “Every little bit counts.”

Louis finishes emptying his nose in a wad of Niall’s toilet paper.

“You’re right,” he says, brushing the sopping tissue off towards Niall’s bit of table. He caps the spoonful of melted, spitty ice cream and replaces it in the freezer.

“D’you know where Harry lives?” Niall asks Liam.

“Why would I know that?”

“Probably ‘cause you act like you know everything…”

“I know where he lives,” Louis pipes up, halfway out of his Gatsby costume. “I borrowed his car, remember?”

Louis proceeds to trip over his dress pants.

“It’s the place by the Outrite Donut, yeah?” Niall says.

“Yeah,” Louis grunts, picking himself back up and shimmying out of the rest. “Why’s your kitchen floor so _hard_?”

 “What floor’s Harry on?”

“Eh… fourth, prob’ly. The top one?”

“I thought you were the one who’d been there.”

Louis brightens. “Yeah! There was a lotta stairs, and I left his key under the ‘Welcome’ mat. It’s all Halloween-looking. Bats, you know?”

“Yeah.”

Niall takes a clove of garlic along. Not really as a precaution (he’s sat next to Harry the entire semester, after all) but more to see what Harry will do, if he does anything. Niall wonders if that’s kind of mean… but he assures himself that Harry won’t mind.

He also spends the greater part of the morning trawling students’ ‘Welcome’ mats and receiving plenty of ugly stares.

“Harry?” he ventures sometimes.

“ _Who?_ ”

“Harry Styles. D’you know where Harry Styles lives?”

“Who’s that? James Bond’s lesser-known cousin?” replies one of the funnier ones.

On the _sixth_ floor, Niall locates a ‘Welcome’ mat with bats on it. He smiles, clasps his hands and… stands there.

Niall hasn’t thought far ahead and doesn’t know what to do now.

Knocking seems most logical, so Niall backs up to the end of the hallway, hunkers down and watches Harry’s door.

It takes him a couple minutes to realize that’s probably like stalking, so he meanders back, crosses his arms and stares at Harry’s door. Similar to taking a final, Niall waits for the answer to simply appear.

He shuts his eyes. It’s just like jumping off a diving board… he just has to jump.

Niall jumps (metaphorically.)

Then no one answers the door.

“Oh, _come on_.” He throws his garlic at the floor, and it ricochets and hits him in the bad knee.

Perhaps Harry can smell the garlic through the door.

Niall knocks again.

“Hey, Harry? I found out where you live from Louis.”

Harry doesn’t care.

Niall kicks at the garlic and feebly taps against the door.

“M’sorry about the garlic,” he tells it. “I kinda just _wondered_ —I mean, I _figured_ it wouldn’t **do** anything, but I still kinda just wondered…”

Harry doesn’t answer.

“Okay,” Niall says. “Leaving now!”

He backs off, hides in the shadows and waits, but Harry still doesn’t show. And doesn’t show for the next ten minutes after that.

On the way back down six flights of stairs, Niall finds a £20 note weighted down beneath some loose change.

* * *

Since there’s nothing else to do, Niall goes to “study in the library.”

Zayn probably lives there more often than he lives in his own apartment. He’s always at the same table, and nowadays he has his little mesh enclosure full of butterflies that he gazes at in sickening adoration, giggling every now and then.

“Hey, Niall!” he whispers. “Astrid just fluttered up to the top, and now she’s showing me her wings.”

It’s maybe the sixth time Zayn’s updated Niall on how the butterflies are doing in the past four minutes.

Niall’s attempting to re-immerse himself in the beauty that is bog people, and then Zayn goes (in the same idiotic, love-struck tone), “but Atal… she’s the _most beautiful_. She’s the littlest, the tiny one, all shy.” He laughs. “Now, Apostrophe, here, is biggest and bravest of the lot, of course—”

If Niall was a _real mean guy_ , he’d tell Zayn that the Painted Ladies would all be dead in 2-4 weeks; Niall googled it shortly after they metamorphosed, and he’s kind of been counting down the days since.

Instead, he mumbles something about needing another book and slides out of his seat.

The best place to fall asleep in the library is on the third floor in the Music section. It’s a really specific aisle because the support beams are at either end and conceal everything, so you don’t have to worry about being stared at.

And it’s _usually_ empty, so when Niall rounds the beam and sees Harry, he drops all of his stuff.

Harry yanks the earbuds out from beneath long hair, and his bare feet stop tapping to the beat. He’s helping Niall pick up his things before Niall even has a chance to bend down.

“So you’re a _real_ vampire?” Niall whispers.

Harry’s hair is fallen across his face as he hands Niall his things, and in a hoarse voice he says, “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

“That’s cool,” Niall says. “Mind if I crash here, too?”

“No.”

Harry’s discarded boots are near his bag. Niall sets his things down near Harry’s, and Harry puts his earbuds back in and resumes his position: back braced against the shelves, legs splayed out directly in front, feet rhythmically tapping together.

Niall finds it surprisingly easy to concentrate. He would’ve thought next to Harry the Vampire, it would’ve been even more impossible reading about bog people than it was next to Bug Maniac Zayn.

Something about Harry, probably. He really does have an interesting smell, and it’s always substantially cooler near him, Niall’s noticed.

But there’s this unique feeling around Harry that’s better than any smell or coolness: you feel good about yourself around Harry, like everything has a point and there’s a purpose and you’ll be _there_ , eventually, wherever “there” is.

Niall wonders if Harry has that effect on everyone, but he likes to think it’s unique to only him.

Harry peeks at Niall from the corner of his eye, and he presses his thumbs together, taps pointer fingers.

They stay there for an hour or so. Niall inevitably gets sleepy. The book slips from his fingers down into his lap, and he sighs and shuts his eyes.

Harry scoots closer, and Niall’s head leans against his shoulder. He can tell Niall’s still awake, and he can tell Niall wants to lean on his shoulder and pretend like he’s fallen asleep, so Harry goes along with it.

Harry would really like to carry Niall home and tuck him into bed like he did the night before.

Only when Harry hears Niall’s heart slow and breath deepen, and he sort of hears the outermost, flowery edges of Niall dreaming, does he reach out a hand.

His fingers hover over Niall’s lap, right over Niall’s hand, and he feels an unfamiliar desire and an instinctual reluctance. He rarely touches the living; he’s cold as death. It's too risky.

But desire overcomes instinct, and Harry presses two fingers against Niall’s wrist, right over the pulse. He pulls out the earbuds with his other hand. He leans his head against Niall’s and shuts his eyes.

It’s nice, he thinks. Better than nice. Beautiful, more rhythmic than any Beethoven, and just when he thinks that, he feels the telltale prickling in his gums.

He runs his tongue over his teeth; it’s supposed to help. It doesn’t.

Harry grimaces, sets his jaw like that’ll keep his fangs down. He presses a hand over his mouth and tries to think of the absolute, _most unappealing_ —the grungy Tomlinson kid and the mangy mutt, Paw Paw.

Harry scowls soon as that pair pops into his head, not even meaning to.

He grinds his jaw, angry and disgusted, and feels his fangs beginning to reside. Once they’re down, he smiles; Paw Paw Tomlinson works even better than blood oranges.

“So can you tell when was the last time I was here?” Niall asks. “You know things like that?”

Harry’s head droops to the side.

“Never mind,” Niall grumbles.

Harry’s taken his fingers off. Niall liked how cold they felt.

“Four days,” Harry mutters after a shared silence.

Harry really _doesn’t_ want to talk about it, and when he hears how interested Niall is, he feels even less like talking about it. He feels a bit depressing, actually. It’s depressing that he knows all this stuff about Niall because it makes him think how the only reason he does is because he’s a ruthless predator and Niall’s his prey.

He doesn’t want Niall to just be some prey. Niall’s very much more than that.

And Harry still only knows that because he knows Niall, and he only knows Niall because of what he is. And the more he thinks about it, the sadder it makes him.

So he says, “The only reason you like being around me is ‘cause I mess with your feelings to make you think so.”

Niall tilts his head, lifts his eyebrows and replies real cool, “And you only like being around me ‘cause you like the way my blood tastes.”

Harry decides to leave the library and hurt Niall’s feelings.

The next time Niall goes to Harry’s place, Harry answers the door. He answers it so fast Niall has the impression he was just waiting for Niall to knock, and he opens it just wide enough to peek his head out.

“What’re you doing?” Niall asks.

Harry opens the door wider. Behind him, Niall sees the TV on.

Harry leaves the door ajar, but he doesn’t verbally invite Niall inside. Niall gathers he’s allowed to enter, and does so.

Harry wears dark blue jeans so tight Niall is pretty sure he sees an outline of briefs. He frowns, blinks and raises his stare to the TV that Harry unpauses, sliding onto the couch in silence, lounged with one leg hooked over the back.

“ _Chopped?_ ” Niall takes the only space left at the very end of the couch.

Harry moves his foot in acknowledgement. After a bit, he mumbles, “It’s ‘cause I don’t really eat, so… I like to watch people cook.”

Niall wonders if Harry still tastes anything, if he remembers what food was like, and then if he remembers what being alive was like, or if he still feels alive right now—

“I don’t remember what food tastes like,” Harry muses. “Taste now is different… it’s like, you still have your senses that you had when you were alive, but they’re all blended together. They’re a bit more emotional, too.”

Niall scooches further away and whispers, “ _Can you read minds?_ ”

Harry smiles. “No.”

Niall’s shoulders relax, and he scooches back.

“The closer I am,” Harry explains, “the more I know how you’re feeling. You sounded confused, is all, and there was a taste like wonder in the air. So I told you.”

“Mm.” Niall nods, closer still. “Does blood taste good, then?”

“Depends.”

“On what?” Niall leans out to Harry.

“On whose blood it is.”

“Does mine taste good?” he whispers, leaning farther still.

Niall’s leaned so far over Harry that it looks like he has him pinned to the couch and they’re about to kiss.

Harry blinks, and Niall realizes what sort of compromising position they’re in.

Also that he doesn’t know at all how it happened.

“I’m just messing with you again,” Harry says.

“Why?”

“It’s an accident sometimes… It makes us both feel better, so I do it sometimes without even realizing.”

“This was an accident?”

“No.”

Niall grins. “You **do** like having me around.”

“Yes.”

It’s enough to make Niall fall off the couch.

He’s lying on his back on the floor, and Harry peers down at him.

“Are you all right, Niall?”

“Yes.”

Harry smiles. Like the Night of Paw Paw, Niall notices an unearthly sheen about it. This time, he knows what he’s looking for, and he recognizes that unfamiliarity as the sharpness of Harry’s canines, specifically. They’re not always sharp, Niall’s learned.

“All Louis’s money for Paw Paw got stolen,” Niall blurts. “By the manga club, probably.”

Harry frowns. “What’s he going to do?”

“I dunno. I think Liam’s got an idea; Zayn asked me to come with him tonight, ‘cause I think Liam’s doing something.”

“Oh.”

Harry feels a surprising surge of jealousy. He knows it’s silly to be jealous. He’s jealous anyway.

And then Niall asks, “D’you wanna come?”

Harry can’t recall the last time he’s ever been invited anywhere, and Niall’s request takes him by considerable surprise.

“You don’t _have_ to,” Niall says when Harry remains silent, and goes on. “I get on with Zayn all right. Guy’s just obsessed with butterflies, is all. _And_ Liam. I don’t really get on with Liam. He can be a bit of a prat most of the time. When he’s not being a prat, he’s all right. He thinks he’s a lot smarter than he really is just ‘cause he knows all these stupid one-liner-type things that sound like bad advice from fortune cookies. Guy drives me nuts.”

“I’d love to go,” Harry murmurs.

He wears his nicest casual for their night out: the dark skinny jeans and his favorite barely-a-shirt silk shirt (he leaves four buttons undone.) He decides against the fedora, but he compromises by wearing about fifty necklaces.

Niall has on these pale blue, skintight things that Harry swears are jeggings, and his mouth feels immensely full soon as he sees him. He manages to garble out some semblance of a greeting, shutting his eyes and conjuring vivid images of that smelly Tomlinson kid to calm himself down.

Zayn helps him out, too: he’s done a center-part with his hair, something straight out of a bad 90s sitcom.

“All good?” Zayn asks. “Hey, Harry.”

“Hello, Zayn.”

“Liam doesn’t know you’re both coming,” Zayn beams. “I **love** surprising him.”

“Uh… so where are we going?” Niall asks.

“That’s _your_ surprise,” Zayn whispers, and sets off so Niall and Harry have to run after him.

They end up at this corner of campus that Niall tends to avoid, the place where everyone has a cup of coffee-something and a Macbook and fake glasses. Zayn leads them into a dim café, his hands clasped in front of his mouth and his shoulders hunched like being among hipster zombies really is that exciting.

“Liam’s got a plan for raising all the money that got stolen,” he says as they all slide into one of the few available tables. “That ‘Miller Liteweight’ is hard stuff! I think he had a _sip_ of that, so he got a little tipsy; you know how it is.”

Niall nods, frowning at Harry when Zayn turns away.

“And then he had the rest of Louis’s Smirnoff, and that was just **it**. Completely _smashed_.”

“What a nightmare,” Niall says in the ensuing silence, because Harry is staring at Zayn with the strangest expression on his face.

“I hope Louis’s all right,” Zayn says, all the joy at recounting Liam’s drunken night gone. “He’s not angry with me, is he?”

“‘Course not,” Niall says, and Harry shakes his head.

“Okay.” Zayn goes back to his regular smile and fixes his glasses, staring past Niall’s head. “ _Look_ ,” he says.

Niall and Harry both turn. An expectant silence falls across the café, and everyone stares at the scuffed wooden stage nearest the window.

Bearded Liam steps out dragging a ragged standup bass, his hair down, unruly, long and curly. His heavy, deliberate footfalls shake dust from the stage. He sets his bass in the middle of the stage, sets one foot on it, and looks up, meeting Zayn’s eye. The café is otherwise silent, still, disbelieving. It's so stupid that Niall does his best to disguise his choking laugh as an ugly sneeze.

Zayn waves, and Liam nearly smiles until he sees that Harry and Niall are also seated at the table.

That’s when he looks ready to leave the stage and smash them both over the head with the bass.

“He’s **so** happy that you’re here!” Zayn whispers to Harry and Niall.

Liam slaps the first note of the first song, glaring at Niall. He plays the entire song glaring at Niall. He sings the entire song glaring at Niall.

“He’s so intense tonight,” someone comments nearby.

“He’s so _beautiful_ tonight…”

Looking around, Niall sees that it looks like everyone is here for Liam. They’re definitely not here for the _coffee_ , he thinks, because it’s so full of grounds it’s about as thick as pudding.

And Niall thinks he knows why Liam is so happy to see him: the entire performance is nothing but the supposed "worst band ever" Paw Paw Squat covers, slap bass and double-tempo.

Liam’s got some rhythm, once he stops glaring at Niall. Everyone else is into it. And Niall actually feels like it might be worth coming out to this godforsaken armpit of campus to hear Liam play, and he’s honestly kind of sad he’s missed out for so long, and he's entirely surprised.

Liam has a haunting voice, howling and hoarse and weathered. The fullness lent by his bass has a kind of fall quality towards it, reminiscent of a lonely hunter on the prowl. Like a wolf running through an orange forest, crunching ice and leaves alike.

And Liam rakes in tips the entire while, too. There’s probably about half the café that’s in love with him, and some people’ll go up three, four times to shove notes in his tip jar. Tip _jars_ , because the first two are already filled, and he’s got a few bouquets, fan arts and love notes mixed in with everything, and the stage is covered in more coins than the bottom of the fountain in the center of campus.

“He’s good,” Niall tells Zayn, trying not to sound all that impressed (or surprised.)

“He’s amazing,” Zayn replies, every star in the universe shining in his eyes. “And he’s even been putting in overtime to make up for all that money we lost…” Zayn’s eyes flood, overwhelmed, and he cries over his coffee pudding while Harry pats his shoulder.

By the end of the night, Niall thinks Liam’s probably made enough to pay for the rest of their educations.

Or maybe not entirely that much, but enough to make a significant dent in Louis’s debt.

Liam steps off the stage to do autographs, and the girl who works behind the counter knows Zayn, so she sets Liam’s on-the-house coffee milkshake and chocolate pie at their table.

Liam can’t help looking pleased with himself when he finally makes it to the table. He still tries to look super suave when Zayn pulls him into a hug and ruffles up his candy floss hair.

“I think you did the best ever tonight,” Zayn says.

“You say that every night,” Liam replies, smiling into his coffee milkshake.

Niall admittedly likes him a little more as Flattered Liam the Philosophy Major.

Zayn and Liam cozy up on one side of the table and coo stuff at each other. Rather than watch, Niall turns to Harry, the only one of them without a coffee-something.

Harry’s hunkered down, his arms folded on the table and his head lowered, and Niall can’t read minds or taste emotion, but he feels like Harry… doesn’t feel good.

He scoots his chair closer, and Harry turns and brushes some long hair out of his face.

“What’s up?” Niall asks, and the concern is enough to make Harry feel that much more embarrassed.

Harry’s hungry, very hungry, and everyone else around is drinking coffee with the consistency of pudding and eating pie and scones, and he’s sitting here drinking in their happiness and feeling more and more like an outcast; another reason he prefers to avoid humanity.

What’s he supposed to say? _I’m hungry; may I please bite on your neck?_

“Liam’s just **so** talented,” he mutters.

“Yeah,” Niall agrees, and then adds, “You know, I play a bit on the guitar, myself.”

“I know.”

Niall smiles. “Come over sometime. I’ll play you something.”

Harry forces a smile. That would’ve sounded amazing before… Before, when it was just Niall, the entire place completely Niall. Now there’s Tomlinson on everything, a strong smell of wet dog, and the possibility of Tomlinson barging in on him while he has his fangs in Niall’s neck so he trips over Niall’s acoustic and leave a hideous and incriminating bruise where he’s usually so careful.

Also, he didn’t get to eat anything, but the thought of seeking out another’s blood really turns Harry off.

It has to be Niall.

“That sounds nice,” Harry says regarding Niall’s invitation. “You’ve got a roommate now, yeah?”

“Yeah, Louis Tomlinson; you’ve met him. He’s great.”

“He’s great,” Harry echoes, face frozen in the fakest smile he’s ever faked.

Niall frowns at him. “Are you really all right?”

“Bit loud in here for me.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Niall’s already beginning to stand, and Harry shakes his head.

“No, no. No, I’m fine.”

“I want a burger. C’mon. This coffee blows.”

Zayn and Liam are too busy tittering about how talented and handsome they are to care that Niall and Harry are about to make like a banana. Niall thinks maybe Zayn is the only person in the world who loves Liam more than Liam loves himself.

Niall finds money in his pocket for a burger. He’s about to ask if Harry wants anything, and Harry’s already giving him that look that isn’t quite a smile when Niall spins towards him.

“Right,” Niall mutters, turning away and guilty, even guiltier when he’s got the world’s greasiest burger in his hand.

They’re along in silence, and Niall has to ask, “Do you ever feel hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hungry now?”

“A little,” Harry admits in an embarrassed mumble, hugging his elbows.

Niall stuffs the remaining half of the burger into his mouth and offers Harry his neck.

“Here,” he says around the mouthful. “Bite me.”

Harry glances around, even though they’re the only ones on the sidewalk.

“Don’t do that,” he says. “I don’t—I mean, I…”

“I don’t mind.”

“Niall…”

Niall backs off, holding up his hands. “Sorry.”

“No.” Harry shakes his head. “M’just… I’m not used to… this. What is this?”

“I’m not used to it, either. Am I overdoing it?”

“ _No_ ,” Harry stresses, wanting to do the _it’s all me, it’s all me, it’s all me_. Instead, he says, “I usually wait ‘til they’re sleeping. Or… you. Until you’re sleeping.”

Niall laughs like this is the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

“Why?” he asks.

Harry stares at him, hands limply hanging and at a loss at where to begin in explaining why someone consciously having their blood sucked by a vampire might be upsetting.

“Okay,” Niall says. “Wait ‘til I’m asleep, then. You use the window?” He gives Harry an impressed look. “You’re a good climber.”

“You know, I… don’t really like talking about it. Forget I said anything.”

Niall frowns. “This doesn’t mean you’re going to find someone else, does it?”

“I—”

“Never mind. Forget I said anything, too.”

Niall’s mad at him. Harry automatically starts soothing, but he draws back, not wanting to manipulate Niall like that. He really wants to stop doing that. He really needs to stop doing that.

“It’s embarrassing,” he says, finally, once they reach Niall’s place.

Niall looks at him for the first time since they last spoke. “Why?”

“Because I need to drink your blood, that’s why.”

Niall shrugs, sort of. “So? I said it was fine by me.”

“It’s not fine. It’s creepy.”

“It’s different,” Niall admits. “Doesn’t mean it’s not still fine. It’s cool.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I can think it’s cool if I want.”

“It’s not ‘cool’ that I need you and you don’t need me,” Harry says, and glares like that’s Niall’s fault. “ **It’s creepy**.”

He turns and leaves Niall, who is a bit confused and a bit hurt.

Niall glares at Harry’s retreat and shouts “emo!” at his back.

He opens his door.

“Niall?” Louis asks, sitting on the couch with Paw Paw laying in his lap.

The whole place smells kind of like wet dog, kind of like “new car,” kind of like “palm beach” and kind of like “leather” because Louis thinks he’s taken care of the smell-of-the-casts problem by tying several packs of “Little Trees” car fresheners around Paw Paw’s neck.

“Were you talking to someone?”

“Yeah,” Niall answers.

“Date night?”

“No.”

“I meant did you want to join _ours_ ,” Louis says, still with just the top of his head peering over the back of the couch.

Niall slumps down at the end of the couch, and as much as it physically pains her, Paw Paw moves that littlest bit to be more away from him and more onto Louis.

“ _Aww, baby_ ,” Louis smiles, smooshing her face while her enthusiastic tail swats Niall in the eyes. “ _Pretty baby Paw Paw, best dog in the world. Give us some kisses._ ”

It’s almost as insufferable as Zayn and Liam.

* * *

Harry avoids Niall the next few days. Or weeks, whatever.

He decides to go all “bad vampire,” biting different students every night, stalking innocents in alleyways just for the scare, attracting small armies of brainwashed cats. He takes up haunting one of his favorite castles on the weekends with an old bad influence he used to go around with.

If any of it ever held any appeal for him, it lost it lifetimes ago.

The only appeal of his undead existence comes in the form of a small blonde Irish, and Harry can’t find anything close to a replacement. And he knows it’s so silly to spend any time away from Niall because people are short-lived and temperamental and prone to getting tired of things.

Harry sits out in the rainiest of rains, mulling over his existence and deciding that this is _by far_ the worst ever Blue Period he’s known. Also the least productive; his last Blue Period he did nothing but paint fantastically for a good fifty years.

He can’t be Blue for fifty years. He can’t even afford one year. One day. Every terrible second spent is a second wasted in torment.

Whatever he feels around Niall, however embarrassed and creepy and out-of-place, it can’t be worse than the feeling of being away from all that.

Harry reappears in the library one morning and has a run-in with Louis Tomlinson, who refuses to speak to him until Harry puts some spare change into the paper McDonalds cup Louis’s carrying around (Louis’s paid off about one-third of the money he needs.)

“He’s in a bad way,” Louis states, rattling the cup.

Harry frowns. “How d’you mean?”

Louis turns away in order to harass a random passerby.

He holds out the cup, Ronald McDonald’s sinister smile right in the girl’s face, and asks, “Please, some money for the cup?”

She gives him some coins and a strange look.

Turning back to Harry, Louis remarks, “Another £2. Not bad!”

“What’s wrong with Niall?”

“Poor lad can’t seem to get a wink of sleep in.”

“Why?”

“If I knew, I could have the problem solved, now, couldn’t I?”

“How’s the dog?” Harry sighs.

Louis perks up at that. “Oh, she’s just wonderful! Still in the casts, but my babe’s in _great_ health.”

“She’s still around?”

Louis’s exuberant smile vanishes, and he looks extremely dangerous all of a sudden.

“What?” he says, but it’s not really a question.

“Did you take her to a shelter, or…?”

“She has a **home** ,” Louis growls, looking at Harry as threatening as someone half-a-foot shorter can.

“Thanks, Louis.”

Louis leans back, arms crossed and face sour.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Ever.”

Harry watches him prowl off to shake his cup at some other unfortunate kids trying to study in a corner somewhere.

* * *

“I really am sorry, Niall.”

“That’s okay.”

“I **really** am.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Zayn passes him an envelope and manages a smile.

“It’s enough,” he says. “Liam’s tips; he finally did it.”

Niall wishes he wasn’t so reluctant to just say _thank you_ … but it’s Liam he has to thank, so he is.

Zayn sees him struggling and sighs, smiling still.

“Y’know…” He only tells Niall because they're both too fuzzed to think straight. “If it makes Liam more bearable for you, anything profound he says is really just something he read out of a fortune cookie. He saves all the fortunes. Tapes them all over his room.” Zayn lowers his chin to the counter. “…You really don’t want any hot chocolate?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“And you don’t want to stay…?”

“That’s all right.”

“…For real, no?”

“No, thank you.”

“Come over and sleep _anytime_.”

Liam goes out a lot at night. To the café, Niall thinks, but it means Zayn’s often left alone. And he’s learned that Zayn possesses the world’s most comfortable bed by spending the last few Friday nights snuggled up in it. He gets about an hour or two of sleep, usually, _maybe_ , and Zayn lets him have the room most Saturdays so Niall can snooze (it’s easier in the daytime, sort of, and when Zayn repeats the same quests again and again in Skyrim, dying at the same spot every time, it’s easy, too.)

Zayn stayed the entire night out with Liam; the moon was full enough to cast blue shadows through the curtains where Niall lay awake.

And now Zayn’s trying to make Niall breakfast, but he struggles to keep his eyes open, and Niall heads out.

Soon as he opens his door, he hears growling from the darkest corner.

Paw Paw’s never done that before.

Niall rounds the couch and finds her in front of his bedroom. Growling at his door, so intent that she doesn’t even notice him.

“What’s up?” he asks, and she turns, actually wagging her tail. She actually _licks his hand_ , and then she wobbles over and scratches at the door. Backing off, she waits for Niall to open it.

He’s never bonded with her like this before, ever, and in case there is an actual live burglar on the other side, Niall sets Louis Tomlinson’s envelope of Liam’s tips on the table and arms himself with the kitchen scissors.

Paw Paw waits for him, and Niall puts his hand on the doorknob. She lowers her head and goes still, hackles raised and ready to charge as well as any dog with one-and-a-half legs.

Niall shoves open the door, and Paw Paw leads with the loudest barking Niall’s ever heard.

He follows behind just in time to see her tumble at Harry, who huddles in the middle of Niall’s bed, fending her off. Paw Paw hobbles around the edges, looking for an opening, but Harry gently eases her off anytime she manages to get both front paws up.

She backs off, glancing over her shoulder at Niall for some backup, turning to growl at Harry.

“I don’t get along with dogs very well,” Harry offers, and Paw Paw snarls him into silence. “They’re naturally inclined to distrust the undead and associates,” he adds, and she makes another clumsy leap for the bed. “What’re the scissors for?”

“You mean…” Niall looks from Paw Paw to Harry, back to Paw Paw. “So this **entire time** … she hasn’t liked me just because of _you_?”

“I don’t know if you can blame the _entire_ thing—”

Paw Paw’s barking cuts him off. She makes it back to Niall and whines.

Niall drags her away, forces her out the door and closes it on her, ignoring the ensuing frantic scrabbling.

“I missed you, Niall—” Harry begins.

“You’ve got a **lot of nerve** , sneaking back in here after sneaking off and hurting my feelings.” Niall turns away as he speaks, and he hasn’t put down the scissors.

“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbles, doing his best to fold himself up and appear small.

“What’ve you been doing, then?”

Harry hunches his shoulders. “Just been… around.”

“‘ _Around?_ ’”

“I’ve been trying to do the typical vampire stuff, but I’m terrible at it. I’m terrible at acting alive, too, really.”

“What’s typical vampire stuff?” Niall asks.

Harry falls flat on his back against the bed, arms spread.

“Haunting castles,” he sighs. “Scaring people, creeping crypts—”

“Drinking blood?”

“Yeah,” Harry mumbles.

It makes Niall jealous, so he sets the scissors down, nears the bed and climbs on next to Harry, laying out in a similar position.

“Any good?” he can’t help but ask.

“No,” Harry moans. “Terrible. I don’t even wanna talk about it.”

“You came back ‘cause you’re hungry.”

“I came back ‘cause I missed you.”

Niall hesitates. But he’ll go ahead and admit, “I missed you, too. I haven’t been sleeping good.”

“I know. You don’t sleep very well, Niall.”

“I slept more when you were here.”

Harry is quiet, and Niall realizes. He says, “It was _because_ you were here that I could sleep.”

Harry stays quiet.

“How’d you swing that?” Niall asks.

“I just gave you good dreams,” Harry says. “To help you fall asleep.”

“Those are some… _intense_ dreams, Harry,” Niall mumbles.

Just the memory of them makes his face turn all red, and he presses his hands over his eyes. Breath mints. In the bedroom.

Harry smiles, and he laughs, shaking his head. “Not _those_. _Those_ are just the dreams from when I bite you. The rest of them are just because.”

Niall props up on an elbow and turns over.

“Because what?” he asks.

“Because I like you.”

“Why’s it different when you bite me?”

Harry shifts his eyes sideways, bites on his top lip. “‘Cause it’s supposed to be good for both of us.”

“You dream?”

“No.”

“So it feels good on you ‘cause the blood tastes good.”

“Just think if you could taste all the happiness in someone else that you liked. A lot,” Harry adds.

Niall turns and edges just a little closer.

“…It feels good anywhere **else**?” he mutters.

Harry’s lips go very thin. The closer Niall’s gotten, the thinner they go, biting down until he busts out laughing, unable to contain it.

Niall laughs as well, but it’s nervous; the sight of Harry’s fangs would take anyone some time to get used to. He feels bad about that wariness he can’t seem to shake, feels like that shouldn’t matter, like he shouldn’t even think about it.

“You’ve gone and made my fangs pop again,” Harry says, touching his tongue to the sharp tip of one. Neither of them can sit still, and both of them are more than a little uncomfortable in different places.

Harry bares his teeth, pressing both hands against his jaw and trying to make them go down.

“It doesn’t make any biological sense for a vampire to get a hard-on. To answer that question,” he says, biting at thin air and speaking as casually as if they were discussing Niall’s latest mediocre grades.

“I didn’t ask _that_ ,” Niall gasps, blushing darkest red.

Harry gives up on his fangs and says, “You were thinking it.”

“Quit listening to what I’m feeling.”

“I’m not; I haven’t this entire time.” Harry pauses, grinning. “It’s more of a _visual_ thing…”

Niall sits up and shifts away, crossing his arms with his back facing Harry.

“So you send me erotic dreams. With your teeth,” he mumbles.

“Not on purpose,” Harry clarifies. “That’s just how they work.”

“Right.”

“I won’t mess with your feelings,” Harry says. “You can ask me anything you like. I should tell you whatever you wanna know… and I want to tell you. I wanna tell you everything.”

He pauses, thinking he’s probably scared Niall, freaked him just a little more. He can’t really help it, the way he feels so lonely all the time. And he can’t really help being scary; it’s synonymous with what he is. Harry begins to feel extremely self-conscious and nervous until Niall asks him, “How’d you turn into a vampire?”

Relieved to get an easy question, Harry answers, “I was murdered!”

Niall can’t help his shivers. He turns to look at Harry.

“By _who_?”

“An evil vampire lord.” Harry’s smiling brightly, but seeing Niall’s ashen expression, he tones the exuberance down a bit.

“Sorry; that’s a bit morbid, huh?"

“A bit,” Niall nods and clears his throat. “How d’you go about changing into one?”

“If your body’s desecrated before your soul leaves it,” Harry says, and his voice is quiet, and he suddenly feels cold in that distant way, and it makes Niall feel stupidly embarrassed about being embarrassed over something as trivial as a hard-on when Harry’s talking about his body being desecrated.

“It’s all right,” Harry murmurs. “Don’t be sad.”

Niall remains still, and Harry sits up and observes with a tilted head. He looks innocent, strangely enough, even with fangs peeking out below his top lip (Harry can’t close his mouth all the way when his fangs fully extend.)

Niall shakes so bad he’s pretty sure the bed’s probably going to fall apart, but he leans closer, anyway.

“C’mere,” he says.

“Like this?” Harry asks, moving to mirror Niall.

“Yeah.”

“We’re real close,” Harry states, and a familiar discomfort creeps in at the edges, urging him to back off.

“Yeah…”

Niall’s all leaned into Harry’s space, legs crossed and hands in his lap.

Harry ignores his warnings, hunches forward and touches the very tip of his cold nose to Niall’s.

They stay like that.

“You said you wouldn’t,” Niall murmurs when he finds himself unable to pull away.

“Not doing anything.”

Harry examines Niall’s eyes. He likes the way they’re like water you can see all the way to the bottom.

His warnings quiet, and his voice is quiet when he admits, “This is nice.”

Niall likes how cool Harry feels. His dark eyes cool, pale skin cool, pouty mouth cool, all calm like watching the ocean from an airplane.

“…You ever kiss, or you just bite?” Niall whispers.

There’s the merest hint of hesitation.

“Just bite,” Harry says, and the pricklings are back.

“How come?”

He has no reason _to_ kiss, Harry thinks, but he doesn’t really want to tell Niall right now. He doesn’t want to hurt Niall’s feelings again, or anything. He feels Niall’s curiosity and some expectancy, and he feels that Niall’s nervous, like the way he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to make Niall any more nervous.

“Don’t have anyone to kiss,” is what he says, and it’s kind of true.

The thought is naturally repulsive.

Harry thinks about having to _open his mouth into another open mouth_. A hot mouth: slimy tongue, slick teeth, wet textures. Niall’s insides.

Niall inside his insides.

His fangs recede, and Harry shudders; maybe Niall mistakes it as anticipation.

He figures he can suffer through a kiss if Niall wants one…

He tries to think it’s not gross because it’s Niall.

And Niall wonders if kissing Harry causes the same feelings as when Harry bites him. He _probably_ needs to be conscious to make a comparison, and Harry’s sitting there, just quivering like one of Zayn’s stupid butterflies.

Niall gives Harry a pointed look; Harry already knows what he wants, and he makes himself nod, bracing himself for the inevitable touching.

Niall licks his lips. He lines his mouth up with Harry’s and shuts his eyes, completely missing Harry’s instinctual grimace. He braces his palms against Harry’s thighs, and Harry thinks the pressure’s not _so_ bad when it’s not on bare skin. But Harry’s hardly gotten accustomed to that before Niall’s inside his insides: slimy tongue, slick teeth, wet textures _everywhere_.

It feels like a declaration of war. A hot, sticky invasion, maybe a little silly the way Niall’s breathing all in his face and Harry doesn’t breathe at all, and he has no blood to rush anywhere and no heartbeat that breaks through his ribcage and no warmth to offer. He wishes he could shut his ears to all the panting and macking going on, and his only nice thought is that his fangs definitely _won’t_ be popping so long as Niall’s tongue in his mouth.

Niall doesn’t know if Harry is or isn’t playing with how he feels.

If he’s sending him any of those lucid blooming violets, crisp minty cookies, velvet ice cream textures _everywhere_. Harry’s so cold, and nothing Niall does changes that. He’s coldly clean, a mouthful of fresh snow with an aftertaste of citrus that never melts. He smells like the oncoming deepest part of winter, the way December is, all pale skies and icicles and piano keys on the high side.

Niall’s fingers hold tight to Harry’s legs; Harry’s fingers rest tentative on Niall’s shoulders.

Niall raises a hand to pull through Harry’s hair. It’s baby soft, long enough to tangle up his fingers, longer and thicker than his. He wants to curl up in all of it the way Harry tucks him into bed.

Harry wonders how long it’s all meant to last.

Until Niall runs out of breath, he surmises. By the sound of things… **soon**.

He prepares himself to lie all about how incredible kissing is; he hasn’t kissed in so long he doesn’t remember what is was like. Niall’s moved on to pulling his hair, and he doesn’t get how _that’s_ supposed to do anything, and he’s afraid he might be getting just a little annoyed and more afraid that Niall will be able to tell.

Niall pulls away with this definite _smack_ that makes Harry flinch.

Harry is prepared, and he looks at Niall.

And he’s struck speechless by the violent reemergence of his fangs that throb every time Niall’s heart beats.

If Harry thought they were aching before, he had to have forgotten just how good that kind of agony feels.

He’s going to eat Niall.

Niall looks at Harry and senses he’s about to be devoured. The thought appeals to him in every way.

Harry’s never seen or smelled Niall so luminous; a diamond blue summer night under a wheat moon. Niall’s heat evaporates from his thighs, and his mouth that tastes like Niall’s insides is open to taste the air, to the taste of Niall’s exhale.

Niall tilts his head and shows Harry his neck, and Harry quakes.

“Eat me,” he says. Tells Harry to do it, voice all hoarse and breathy, and for once, Harry’s too flustered, too out-of-his-head to begin the typical string of complaints about what a sad, wretched predatory creature he is.

Niall waits, and Harry edges over and takes Niall’s face in both hands, lowering his head and opening his mouth to drink Niall in, brushing the tip of his nose against alive skin.

“I’ve never done this before,” he whispers against Niall’s neck, even if there’s no breath from his words. “…They’ve always been asleep, Niall.”

“I’ve never kissed a vampire before,” Niall replies, and he finds he’s trembling bad as Harry.

He gets a strange feeling from having Harry’s fangs so close to his neck. That same kind of vague warning, like the one he had at Halloween. Far stronger than that is a strange want that he doesn’t understand, something that thrums between them both.

He wants to be bitten, but he’s afraid to be bitten.

And Harry wants to bite, but he’s afraid to bite.

The tips of Harry’s fangs graze over Niall’s pulse. They stop.

“Tell me if it hurts,” Harry says in a voice so ragged Niall hardly hears.

Niall opens his mouth. To say something, maybe, except Harry bites down before he has the chance.

Niall goes completely slack. He can’t move anything because he can’t feel anything that isn’t Harry’s teeth against his neck. Harry’s bite sears through his veins, sets him on fire. His eyes glaze, he stops shaking, and he just sort of lolls in Harry’s hands, floating and sleeping and awake all at the same time.

It’s conscious dreaming, and Niall looks down at himself held in Harry’s hands, how tender Harry holds him. There’s a fuzziness emanating from Harry that he draws towards, and Niall smells happiness. He tastes uncertainty and crushing loneliness, but over all of it lies the joy of disbelief.

Niall feels desire, the corners of possessiveness, hints at jealousy, plenty of angst in the delicate way Harry draws his blood. It’s too soft to be entirely innocent, and in the dream, Niall laughs. The edges of Harry laugh with him until they’re both laughing themselves over the moon, forever until he feels Harry begin to fade.

The fuzziness goes, and the bed comes back. Harry’s hands holding to his head, how he needs to breathe, that he has a heartbeat. He can feel his fingers, toes, everything coming back into focus, a sharp sting on his neck.

Niall sighs.

Harry is careful about taking only as much as he needs and not as much as he wants. He lifts his fangs from Niall, runs his tongue over Niall’s skin to soothe away the bruises and the tiny incisions and the hurt, lapping up any evidence. Cleaning Niall off, and it’s nice. It’s gentle, and it’s calming enough that he’s able to begin worrying again.

Niall thinks it’s over too fast. A few seconds, it seems, but the dream’s full of enough to last hours, and parts keep coming back to him, little bits at a time.

Harry wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips have gone pale pink to deep blush, and the green of his eyes has darkened. Niall sees a noticeable new sheen in his hair (maybe it’s grown a little), and his face doesn’t even look as pale, and his fangs have gone and he licks his lips and closes his mouth.

Harry stares at Niall.

Niall stares at Harry.

A creature of habit, Harry retrieves the limitless pack of C. Howard’s Violet candies from his pocket and pops a mint.

Niall watches in silence, eyelids drooping and stained glass swimming at the edges of his eyes.

“Most people worry about that before they kiss,” he finally says, voice far higher than usual.

Harry swallows and replies, “Most people don’t have to think about their breath smelling like blood.”

“Can that happen more than every two weeks…?” Niall sinks lower to the bed. He’s exhausted. It comes in waves.

Harry smiles. “I don’t wanna make you into an anemic prune, Niall. You need time to make new blood.”

Niall closes his eyes, sleepy at last and cozy. Not tired, but sleepy. An amazing sleepiness, refreshing and reaffirming and lively, and he mumbles, “So… w-we kiss every two weeks…”

“Okay,” Harry agrees, guiding Niall to the top of the covers that he pulls down.

“I guess that’s the best we can do,” Niall says while Harry tucks him in. “We could make it work like that. But is there a way I can make blood grow back faster?” he asks around a yawn.

“I don’t think so, Niall.”

“That was the best I ever felt,” Niall says into the blanket.

To Harry, it sounds like the loveliest thing anyone’s ever said.

He replies, “Me, too.”

“Don’t bite me when I’m sleepin’ anymore,” Niall slurs. “Gotta be awake, Harry.”

Harry nods even though Niall can’t see.

“All right… That’s good, Harry. That’s real good.”

Harry doesn’t know why, but he puts out his hand and sets it against Niall’s forehead, without hesitance. It feels right, is why, he figures.

“Going to sleep,” Niall sighs. “For a long while, probably.”

“I’ll be around when you wake up.”

“I just think you should be around all the time.”

Niall falls asleep for the first real time since Harry left. He can’t sleep without Harry, not the kind of sleep that brings him alive, that melts away the deepest exhaustions, where his dreams are full with color, warm and happy and Harry’s at the edge of all of them.

Harry doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t want to be away from Niall, and he doesn’t want to _watch_ Niall sleep, but he likes that Niall _does_ sleep because he loves Niall’s dreams, so he slinks towards the bedroom door that Paw Paw waits on the other side of. He can still listen to Niall from there.

Aloud, he says, “Hey.”

Paw Paw growls.

“I’m not that bad of one, I promise.”

Paw Paw snorts.

“M’not gonna hurt Niall. Okay?”

Paw Paw doesn’t trust him.

“I’m gonna be around. M’not gonna leave again. Please, get used to me.”

Paw Paw whines.

Harry stretches out before the door on his belly. He doesn’t dare open it, but he does put his hand within sniffing distance of the gap at the bottom. Paw Paw’s nose appears pressed against the floor, her tongue following and trying to determine Harry’s ulterior motives.

With his other hand, Harry reaches into his pocket. He throws out his last bit of loose change for Niall to find later, and it all scatters beneath the bed.


End file.
